Need article about Mom who compares having handicapped child to ending up in Holland instead of Paris?

Question

Do you know author of, or have a copy of, the article written many years ago about a Mom who discovers that she has a handicapped child? She says that being pregnant is like preparing for a trip to Paris -- you plan, you study Paris maps and guidebooks, you're prepared for Paris, excited about Paris, then you find out your plane is going to Holland. And you're horribly disappointed -- and jealous of all your friends who went to Paris and brought back photos of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. But while you're in Holland, you find the beauty in the tulips and windmills and you realize that Holland is not Paris, but it can be just as beautiful. So then when her friends showed off photos of their soccer stars and spelling bee champs, she felt just as proud and happy to show photos of her little angel whose accomplishments that day may have just been to string 2 sentences together. Anyway, I'm so anxious to find this article so if you know a link or a source, please let me know!

Answer 1

If you got to IMDB, Tyne Daly, you will see that she was in the movie (adapted from the book). The movie she was in was "Kids Like These" and it was done in 1987. Emily Perl Kingsley wrote the story, but I don't know if that means she wrote an adaptation of someone else's story to make the movie.

In the movie, Tyne Daly refers to Rome and Holland, rather than Paris and Holland.

To the best of my knowledge, this was a true story.

Here's a link to a Emily Perl Kingsley:
http://www.creativeparents.com/Holland.html

Answer 2

Welcome to Holland



When you are 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, Michelangelo’s David, a gondola ride 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 has 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 is 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.

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 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.



Reprinted from “Dear Abby”