Welcome to Holland

This is the first week in a long time that I didn't know what I wanted to write about when I sat down to do the blog. It's been a week like most others, but now that I look back, there have been a few things worth sharing.

Jake ate lunch in the cafeteria for the first time this week. He's been eating lunch at school everyday for the past few weeks, but it's been in his classroom with a few friends. Crowded tables, noise levels and the logistics of getting in and out of the lunch table with the attached benches have kept him away. He told me earlier in the week he had decided he was ready to try the cafeteria and wanted to do it on Thursday. Not sure why he picked Thursday, but from what I hear, it went well. 

While he's been working very hard in therapy and making consistent progress, the muscle in his left leg that control the flexing up of the ankle have not been responding....until now. Finally this week, it appears the muscle starting to come back. Jake can flex his left foot up about an inch off the ground which was really exciting to see. More exciting was the smile that spread across his face when he realized what he was doing. Getting his ankle back should help improve his walking and eventually (hopefully) allow him to get rid of his brace. His speed has definitely been improving even with the brace. He did a walk test back on October 8th and walked 240 meters in 6 minutes. This week he walked 352 meters, quite an improvement in 5 weeks!

Warriors won the Superbowl, 12-0! This is the football team the boys have been honorary captains of this season and they were both really excited to see the team win today. It was their first superbowl win and we were glad we got to share it with them.

Finally, this story has been shared with me three times in the past month by three completely unrelated people, so now I'm sharing with you. While the specifics of this story are different than our situation with Jake, I loved the author's perspective in dealing with the unexpected things life can throw at you. 

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

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.

We don't know how long we're going to be "in Holland," but we're doing our best to make the most of our time here and appreciate things in a different way. We are hopeful we'll get to Italy one day, but if we don't, that's ok.