Welcome to Holland

When Archie was born and we were told that he came with a little extra something – a 47th chromosome – one of the first pieces of information I frantically started to read was a booklet published by the Down Syndrome Association for new parents with a baby with Down Syndrome.  I remember sitting in the car straining my puffy, red eyes under the glare of the street lights as we drove home from the hospital following the ‘official’ news of Archie’s diagnosis.  I was desperate to read something which would ease the pain and grief that seemed to engulf my whole body and on the first page it had the essay ‘Welcome to Holland’.

“Welcome to Holland” is an essay, written in 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley, about having a child with a disability. This piece is given by many organisations to new parents of children with special-needs and the metaphor is that the trip to Italy is a typical birth and child-raising experience, and a different trip to Holland is the experiencing of having and raising a child with special-needs.

This is the entire essay …

‘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 Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several 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 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. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And 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 experience will never, ever, ever, go away. 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 process of acceptance of Archie’s diagnosis has come through support from each other, the love of our children and family, friends, through education and mainly through falling in love with Archie himself, but many of the lines from the poem are still printed within my head.  Yesterday, whilst clearing out a bag full of Archie’s appointment letters, information we have been given and items we have gathered ourselves, and trying to organise a new shelf on which all this new info could be housed, I was reunited with these words.  Maybe time and maybe simply getting to know Archie has changed my perspective on this essay but as I read it again, although I cried, I also felt a degree of confidence, acceptance and anticipation for the future.

…..and so for me today, although the essay ‘Welcome to Holland’ is wonderful and true in many, many ways, the part that says ‘the pain will never ever, ever go away’ (and the fact that there are two ‘evers’) upsets me and makes me cross.  I don’t want someone to tell me that – maybe because it panics me into feeling and thinking about being bombarded by the onslaught of info, the hardships, the differences, the delayed milestones and the scary things I don’t want to hear.  Although I completely understand the metaphor of excitement for a vacation to Italy that becomes a disappointment when the plane lands instead in Holland, today I feel a long way from the sadness and pain that I felt in November when we were told that we had arrived in Holland.  Nearly six months on I feel happy and grateful to have Archie in our lives as part of our family.

Today Jamie is a happy sporty loving nine year old, today Ollie is a lively, animal loving 6 (nearly seven) year old, today Sam is a sprightly, questioning and inquisitive four year old, today Harry is a cuddly, loving toddler and today Archie is a delightful and smiley baby
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This is Archie's default demeanour

Being a parent to any child is a tangled mess of dodgy take offs, turbulent flights and heavy bumpy landings in surprise destinations and I have begun to realise that we are not actually stuck in Holland and there will be many times that we may choose to leave Holland and visit Italy.  In fact in many ways we already have.  Things with Archie seem much the same as they did with the other boys.  He smiles, he giggles, he rolls, he loves my singing and a good snuggle with anyone and although I am aware that he will not always make incredible advances, if and when this happens we will be ready to support him.

So who says the pain will never ever, ever go away and we will be stuck in Holland?

Six months on I have found that I really do love Holland,  I do love tulips and I am quite keen on clogs (especially the red ones in www.plumo.com) and I am impressed by the capacity of eco-friendly windmills, but I also love Italy, the wonder of the Tower of Pisa, the beauty of Lake Como and the grandeur of the Colosseum.  I am enjoying my passports to two countries with all of our children and as Jez said to me many months ago ‘we’ll probably end up visiting America and France and Kenya and many other countries along this parenting journey.’  Today I am happy and I have a clear and better perspective on our capacity as a family to enjoy both Italy and Holland and whatever other countries we may end up visiting.