Our Happy Little Life

WELCOME TO HOLLAND:

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—or adopt one, 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 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 flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” You say. “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I am 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.

This essay was written by Emily Perl Kingsley. She is a writer for Sesame Street and is the mother of a child with down syndrome.

I love Grayson so much. I would go to the ends of earth for him. He is my hero and the reason I wake up everyday. I love celebrating all his little accomplishments, and watching him when he gets so proud of himself. I love watching him teach people that you can expect the unexpected. He seems to make it his life goal to prove people wrong. Grayson I love you and even on the tough days I wouldn't trade you for anything.