Thoughts

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately (a dangerous past time, I know!). Remembering, really, would be a more accurate term.

Remembering our shock at Miss Sunshine's cleft diagnosis. Remembering our fear at what our daughter would have to face. Remembering our pain at all the losses we were facing (well, mostly ME and my pain - Daddy Mac actually adjusted astoundingly well outside of his fear of her surgery). Remembering our anger at what we were facing, at what SHE was facing. Remembering my guilt, my conviction that I MUST have done something wrong to have caused this. Just remembering.

I read this poem on a friend's Facebook page a while back - they had a child born VERY early and I know this summed things up for them as well.

I have never found anything that put into words quite so well what I felt, and still feel, about Miss Sunshine's cleft. And I'd like to share it with you, too.



Welcome to Holland!
by Emily Pearl Kingsley

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 guidebooks 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 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 go out and buy new guidebooks. 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, 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." The pain of that will never go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, very lovely things about Holland.