Poems and Stories About Children and Adults Who Have Special Needs
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 yet shared that unique experience or understant 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 our 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 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 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." And the pain of that will never, 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.
HEAVEN'S VERY SPECIAL CHILD
A meeting was held quite far from Earth:
"It's time again for another birth."
Said the Angels to the Lord above,
"This special child will need much love."
"Her progress may seem very slow,
Accomplishments she may not show,
And she'll require extra care
From folks she meets way down there."
"She may not run or laugh or play
Her thoughts may seem quite far away:
In many ways she isn't adapt
And she'll be known as handicapped."
"So let's be careful where she's sent
We want her life to be content.
Please, Lord, find the parents who
Will do a special job for you."
"They will not realize right away
The leading role they're asked to play
But with this child sent from above
Comes a stronger faith and richer love."
"And soon they'll know the privilege given
In caring for the Gift from Heaven.
Their precious charge, so meek and mild
Is Heaven's Very Special Child."
