After I saw Holland, I'd say, I'd go to Holland again and again

I just read a poem of Emily Perl Kingsley about having a child with disability and I wanted to share it with you..This poem tells a lot and better than most of the sources..



WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by
Emily Perl Kingsley.


c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

I used to cry..

I have a habit to erase the bad memories from my brain as soon as I can and I do it so good that sometimes I make up some good memories instead of the bad ones. I don’t know should I call it as a habit, or not, because I don’t do it intentionally, it just happens. I’m not saying I never remember any, but sometimes my brain really surprises me with its forgetting ability.

I don’t remember the beginning of this habit, but I remember that I haven’t liked it for a long time. I still sometimes don’t like it because forgetting brings unlimited forgiveness beside and unlimited forgiveness may sometimes hurt you in a lot of ways. But despite the harm, it creates a very peaceful relief inside not to remember a bad incident and to feel empty. Anyways, as I said I don’t remember the exact start of this forgetting and forgiving, but I certainly know that I have this virtue by the help of my sister.

I used to cry when someone stopped me on the way while I was driving my sister’s stroller, which she used for a very long time, and asked me is there a problem with her..

I used to cry when children left the park because of getting scared of her..

I used to cry when I saw her crying when all the kids left the park and she started swinging by herself..

I used to cry when our ‘normal’ neighbors jumped on top of our apartment in the middle of the night because they got disturbed of the sound of the music my sister listened and they decided to give a lesson to us..

By those times, while I was feeling anger and enmity to those people, she was still trying to hug and kiss them. While I wasn’t able to think anything good, she was achieving to be ok and to forget in a way after a while. And I noticed that she was way happier than me by doing so. May be this was her secret.

And now I know that this is her secret. Actually it’s not a secret. Let people be bad, thoughtless by themselves..As one said “Forgiveness is the relief from the past”. Just enjoy your relief..