Welcome to Holland...

It's late and I'm still working on "nesting" my living room but I refuse to miss a day posting! I decided why not add a little international flair to today?! We dropped a bucket of good ol' American cash at fabulous Swedish IKEA, where we also ate dinner, so why not add the "Welcome to Holland" story that many have ready before.

I first came across this when we were faced with a positive AFP screen when I was pregnant with little R. I spent way too much time reading message boards for "special needs" children for weeks after that. I have always read the following in that context. However, someone brought it up and how it can also relate to grief and it really does!

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 guidebooks, and you make your make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo’s David, the gondolas in Venice. You may even 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 is preparing to land. And as the plane is landing, the pilot makes an announcement: “Welcome to Holland.”


“Holland ?!?!” you say. “What do you mean, Holland? I signed up to go to Italy! All of my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy!”


But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve taken you to Holland, and there you must stay. The important thing, however, is that 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 have never met.


It’s really just a difference place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there been a while, you’ll catch your breath. And then you’ll look around and notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.


But everyone you know is busy going to and from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful place it is. And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. Italy is what I had planned.”


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 and very lovely things about Holland.

Rocky Mountain News, October 29, 1990