Welcome to Holland!

WELCOME TO HOLLAND!

From: Meeting Ground

January/February 1988 Issue

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like you are planning a vacation to Italy. You’re all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks and you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around. When it comes time, you pack your bags and head for the airport – for Italy.

Only when you land, the stewardess says, “Welcome to Holland!” You look at one another in disbelief and shock and say, “Holland? What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy!”

But they explain there’s been a change of plans and you’ve landed in Holland, where you must stay. “But I don’t know anything about Holland! I don’t want to stay!”

But you stay. You go out and buy some new guidebooks. You learn some new phrases and you meet people you never knew existed. The important thing is that you are not in a filthy, plague-infested slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place than you had planned. It’s slower-paced than Italy, and less flashy than Italy, but after you’ve been there a little while and you have a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They’re all bragging about what a great time they had there, and for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that where I was going. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of it will never, ever go away.

You have to accept that pain because the loss of that dream, the loss of the plan, is a very, very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.