Welcome To Holland
"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 flight attendant 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... Its 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 than Italy, less flashy than Italy: But after you've been there for awhile you notice that Holland has windmills, Holland had tulips, Holland 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 was were I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned.
"The pain of that will never, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is very significant loss. "But if you spend the rest of your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to go to Italy, Your may never be free to enjoy the very, special, the very lovely things about Holland." And Holland is such a beautiful place!"