文章的作者是Emily Perl Kingsley. 她為電視節目<芝麻街>寫了三十年的劇本。她的兒子(1974)是唐氏兒。文章充滿了過來人的智慧和幽默。願它給每一位家長帶來一絲笑容。
<b><center>Welcome To Holland</center></b>
<i><center>by Emily Perl Kingsley</center></i>
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability -- to try to help people who have not shared this 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 Iataly. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. Mechelangelo's David. The gondolas in Venice. you may learn some handy phrases in Intalian. 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."
"<i>Holland??</i>" 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 <i>different</i> 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, evre 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.
<center>* * * * * * *</center>
<i>Emily Perl Kingsley has been writing scripts for Seaame Street for thirty years. Much of her work on the show has focused on enhancing the understanding and acceptance of people with disabilities. Emily is the mother of Jason Kingsley (1974) and served as the dictation typist for Jason's and Mitchell Levitz's book </i>Count Us In: Gorwing Up with Down Syndrome.
我們四面受敵,卻不被困住;心裡作難,卻不至失望; --哥林多后书四章八节
|