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 Michalangelo 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 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 chnage in the flight plan.  Theyu'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 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."

	The pain of that will never 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 will never be free to
	enjoy the very special, very lovely things about Holland.