WELCOME TO HOLLAND

(Original by Emily Perl Kingsley. Source of this particular adaptation unknown)

When you're going to have a baby, it's like you're planning a vacation to Italy. You're all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks, you learn different phrases in Italian so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your bags and head for the airport - for Italy.

Only when you land the stewardess says "Welcome to Holland". You look at one another in disbelief and shock, saying "Holland? What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy". But they explain there's been a change of plans and you've landed in Holland, and there you must stay. "But I don't know anything about Holland! I don't want to stay!" you say.

But you do stay. You go out and buy new guidebooks, you learn some new phrases and you meet people you never knew existed. The important thing is that you are not in a filthy, plague-infested slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place than you planned. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.

You've been there a little while and you have a chance to catch your breath you begin to discover that Holland has Windmills; Holland has tulips; Holland has Rembrandts. But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They're all bragging about what a great time they had there and for the rest of your life you will say; "Yes that's what I had planned". The pain of that will never, ever go away.

You have to accept that pain, because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan, is a very, 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, the very lovely things about Holland!