School Nurse Perspectives
Gerri Harvey, RN, MEd
Welcome To Holland
by Emily 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 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 guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced (or faster-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 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, 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 may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
The author, Emily Kingsley, has a son with Down syndrome and used to work for Children's Television Workshop. She was instrumental in the showcasing of children with disabilities on Sesame Street.
A special thank you to Elizabeth Hinkson of the Alpine School District in Utah for providing the name of the author of this piece. I have had it posted here with Author Unknown for several years, and many school nurses have written to say that they are very moved by this eloquent piece.