WELCOME TO HOLLAND

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a
fabulous vacation 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 on and says,
"Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland??
I am supposed to go to Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy!
All my life I have 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 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 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 is 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.