Welcome to Holland

We are often asked to describe the experience, to help others understand it, to imagine how it would feel. Well 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 guidebooks, and you make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michaelangelo'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 and 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! Im 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 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 guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would of never have met.

It's really just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there a while, you'll catch your breath. And then you'll look around you 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