In Emily Perl Kingsley’s essay “Welcome to Holland,” she compares raising a child with special needs to planning a trip to Italy—only to land in Holland instead. I don’t think any comparison has ever hit me so hard or resonated so deeply in my life.
Today I attended Keelie’s final IEP meeting. This May she will graduate from her post-secondary program, having completed all the credits required to earn her high school diploma. And I can’t keep my mind from wandering back to the day, twenty years ago, when I took her for an evaluation at Early Intervention.
“Your daughter has moderate to severe global delays.” Not just the words, but the look on the evaluator’s face, is burned into my mind.
“Will she catch up?” I asked, gripping Hope like a life preserver.
“Miracles can happen,” was the response.
Miracles can happen—but they often don’t look the way you imagine them.
The miracle I’ve experienced in these twenty-one years with Keelie is a complete shift in perspective.
Emily Perl Kingsley wrote:
“The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place… It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy… and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, and Holland has tulips… 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… 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.”
Today I needed that reminder. IEP meeting days have always been hard for me. They call attention to what is, and to what could have been.
But what could have been isn’t what matters. What is, and how far we’ve come, is what counts. And, boy, have we come far.
Keelie has taught me so much. She has taught me about friendship, flowers, rainbows, and magic. And I can’t help but think that one day, on the other side of the veil, she’ll hold my hand and show me just how much I’ve grown in my years as her mother. And then I’ll fully understand all the beautiful things about life in Holland.
Twenty years ago, all I could see was the flight path to Italy disappearing behind me. Today, I sat in that meeting and realized I’ve spent two decades learning the language of a country I never planned to visit. Keelie didn’t just teach me to notice the windmills and the tulips. She taught me that the trip I actually took was never the consolation prize. It was the whole point. So today, instead of grieving what could have been, I’m just going to sit here and be proud of how far we’ve come—and grateful for every single mile of it.
Witness Marks 