Wildly entertaining post!!!

Just kidding. I lured you in with the title, didn't I? I am SO sneaky. Some might even call me clever.

I am not in a particularly mushy or sentimental mood; however, I ran across "Welcome to Holland" on a blog that I follow (Just Show Up: Seeing Ability in Disability) and I reread it. I think it is worth posting for those of you have never had a chance to read it.

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Welcome to Holland

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 guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Michelangelo’s 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 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 guide books. 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…and 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, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very, 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.

copyright 1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.

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By the way, I love Holland. :)

Heart surgery update: I took Asher to New Orleans for his post-op appointment today. He had an echo cardiogram, two chest x-rays, and a visit with the cardiologist. He also had his three little stitches removed. Everything looks great!

We have 7 more weeks of not picking him up under his arms, which is difficult since as of today he weighs 22 lbs 8 ounces. We also have several weeks of no daycare so he won't get sick. They didn't say anything about not letting Gumbo lick him in the mouth, so we're good on that.

On the up side, NO RSV SHOTS THIS YEAR! That will save me about $200 per month! In fact, the cardiologist said that Asher is able to deal with illness better than ever now because he has a healthy heart. :)

So basically, I drove 8 hours in one day to have 3 stitches removed.

I guess I should apologize for luring you in with a false promise of a good time. I promise (really) that I will post something wildly entertaining very soon. Otherwise my faithful few will quit reading. I know you people just sort of scan through the serious, sentimental posts. ("Darn it. She's on her soapbox again." or "Great. She must be hormonal." or "Two posts in a row with no pictures?! I'm outta here.") You can't fool me...