What a strange week this has been. I've had a pretty great time, really. I love spending time at the school, even though I'm working on more things than I'd intended too. I love that I know so many of the kids, through Brownies, Daisies, classroom volunteering and just as friends of the kids. I love the friends who I can call throughout the day just to giggle, gripe or whatever.
Feeling so fortunate too. One friend is out of town, keeping watch as her brother undergoes an amputation of his leg after fighting really hard for over a year to save it. Other friends learned over the weekend that their new baby boy has Down Syndrome. It's humbling to be around people who handle life-changing news with grace, love and openness. Oh, I have to post this thing I read years ago. My best friend Brandy passed it on then and I searched for it last night to send our friends. This piece was written by a woman who had a special needs child and I just love it:
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. 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 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.
Emily Perl Kingsley 1987
Isn't that beautiful? Lastly, someone almost hit us head-on yesterday on a busy, high-speed road. I had the left arrow and she barrelled through the red light and I slammed on the brakes and it was just inches, seriously. I had Lydia in the car with me and it scared me senseless. I could see this woman, like in slow motion, with her mouth open, looking horrified. It would have been a bad accident, I think. All of these things have made me think again of how very, very quickly everything we know, expect and love can change and reminds me to pay attention right now to all these great things in life.
In that spirit, I'm closing the laptop to snuggle my kids, even though the price is watching Alvin and the Chipmunks - again.
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