Welcome to Europe

Adaptated from Welcome to Holland, c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley

For many parents of children with disabilities, Welcome to Holland was a starting point. It helped us understand and describe our experiences in a context that parents of neurotypical children could easily understand. Using poetic metaphor, Welcome to Holland explains that while expectant parents always hope to visit Italy (raise typically developing children), some of us end up in Holland (raising a child with a disability). Italy, the poem maintains, will always be preferred, but Holland is OK too if you have no choice but to be there.

I appreciate the help in Nate’s early years, but Welcome to Holland no longer resonates. My child is not a consolation prize, and he is not second best. With this in mind, I’ve rewritten the poem so it more accurately describes my perspective as Nate’s mom.

***

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 been a winding road, but today it feels like this……

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous trip — to somewhere in Europe. You buy an array of guide books that describe all the astounding cultures, languages and sights to see across Europe, and you make delightful plans for whichever region you end up visiting.

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 you have arrived in one of the exciting, complex, beautiful and unique countries of Europe.

“Europe?!?” you say. “I’ve planned and prepared for all the diverse cultures of Europe, and I’m very excited for wherever I’ve landed. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Europe.”

So you exit the plane and start to fall deeply in love with the small corner of Europe you ended up in. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

Not everything about where you’ve landed in Europe is beautiful and exciting, and sometimes being here is nothing like you expected. It might be slower-paced than you like, or flashier than you prefer. Other times, after you’ve been there for a while, you catch your breath, you look around. . . and you notice how exquisitely picturesque your part of Europe is. The sights and sounds and colors that you can’t find anywhere else in the world.

Some people you know, many people, ended up in other parts of Europe. . . and they all have a variety of experiences to share about where they live. And for the rest of your life you will say “Yes, it would have been fun to go to other parts of Europe too, but it seems there are good things and bad things about any place you live.”

And once in a while you find yourself feeling wistful and curious about what it’s like to live somewhere else.

But…you don’t spend your life mourning where you didn’t go, because you are too busy living a wonderful, busy, messy and magnificent life full of all the very special, the very lovely things that you can’t find anywhere else except in your home, in your town, in your very own part of the vast continent of Europe.

Click here to read the original Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley.