"Welcome to Holland!"

 Dear Abby's advice today, with the beautiful "I am going to Nashville!" line reminded me of the old advice-column favorite of mine.  Share it with someone today who might need to read it? 

by Abigail Van Buren   November 5, 1989

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Dear Abby: I very much appreciated all the letters about Down Syndrome children. I admired particularly the letter from the grandmother who admitted that it was a traumatic experience for the family and required a necessary period of adjustment.

I would like to share with your readers an article distributed by the Parent Program for the Washington State School for the Deaf. I keep it handy to read whenever I feel overwhelmed, when life throws me a curveball. I think the philosophy expressed in this article can be applied to every aspect of one`s life-not just for the birth of a child with disabilities.

-Carole Mulligan, Seattle.

Dear Carole: I agree. That piece deserves a nationwide audience. In fact, my staff discovered that the piece you submitted was written by Emily Perl Kingsley, the well-known author of the television movie ''Kids Like These.''

Here it is:

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 guidebooks 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 guidebooks. 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, 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 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, the very lovely things about Holland.''