Where will this plane land?

When it's Hadley's turn to say our family prayer, she often asks for something that may surprise you. It doesn't surprise me, though. I know Hadley. She used to pray that Heavenly Father would send her a sister. Now that she's wrapped up that request, she's added one more. "Please bless that my baby sister will be deaf like me."

Reminiscing... when I was younger, my siblings told me I was adopted because I was the only one with green eyes. I hated that. I wanted blue eyes like the rest of them. Ironically, as they've aged, some of their eyes have turned green. Ha. So there. But that funny feeling of wondering if, maybe, I really was adopted stuck with me. Nobody likes to be the odd man out. Nobody wants to not fit in. Unique, special, different...all cool ideas until you are the one struggling with the oddity. Hopefully we all grow up and accept who we are, differences and all. But right now, for my nine year old daughter, she would love to have somebody "deaf like me" in our family. And I understand as completely as I can with my limited understanding of what it means to be different.

A few months after Hadley was born, someone gave me this story and its message has never left me:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
byEmily Perl Kingsley.

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.

I remember desperately wanting to be in Italy with everyone else. I remember after MONTHS of work with Hadley, she could finally point to her nose when asked "Where's your nose?" She was almost two years old... and I proudly displayed this talent to a friend who promptly asked her 18 month old, "What's this?" and the child responded, "That's my elbow." Just like that, my heart broke and I wondered if I'd ever know what life was like in Italy.

Well, now I've been to both places and have tremendously enjoyed both. I love the Rembrandts and the tulips. I love the gondola rides and the Michelangelos. And now I have a few months left to wonder...where exactly will this plane land?

Secret confession: I'd sort of like to go to Holland again.