Are You in Holland Too?

a new take on an old essay

Some of you may be familiar with Emily Perl Kingsley’s 1987 reflection called Welcome to Holland, about raising a child with a disability. Kingsley’s child had Down Syndrome, but it works for any kind of divergence from “the norm.” As you prepare to welcome a child into your family, Kingsley says, you make all the preparations… for a trip to Italy. You dream about what you will see there: the Coliseum. Michelangelo’s David. You buy an appropriate wardrobe, check the guidebook out of the library, map an itinerary. Then your child arrives, and it’s not what you expected; it’s as if the pilot has touched down the plane and said, “Welcome to Holland.” 

Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash

Kingsley writes, “So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.” There is great beauty there, it just looks different. Meanwhile, though, everyone’s bragging about their wonderful adventures in Italy. And the pain of the diverted trip doesn’t ever fully go away, even if you can learn to love the terrain you didn’t choose but is now yours. (I always wonder how residents of the Netherlands feel about this analogy. We visited Amsterdam and surrounding areas back in 2019 and fell in love with it. Anyway.)

I read Kingsley’s essay when my kids were small. I appreciated it, in a sort of academic sense, nodding along while sipping an espresso at a cafe in Florence. Then my kids hit adolescence and all the mental health challenges that went with it. We boarded the overnight train from Venice to Milan, stowed our bags, took the Tylenol PM, donned the eyemask, and woke up in Utrecht, and we’ve been kicking around the Holland countryside ever since. The adjustment has been rough, but I love so much of what I’ve found here. (Thank you to the Dutch for the gift of gezellig. I bet Kingsley didn’t have that in mind when she wrote in 1987, but if anyone needs that healing, accepting energy, it’s Holland parents.) 

Not long ago, one of my new countrywomen sent me this article from a Jewish website by Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz. Schwartz argues that it’s all Holland:

I find [Kingsley’s] essay powerful and moving—but too narrow in its focus. It’s not that parenting a disabled child is Holland. All parenting is Holland. All of life is Holland. You make plans, get a guidebook—and find out you’re ending up someplace entirely different than you expected. That another parent’s Holland may be harder or more painful than yours doesn’t negate that every single one of us, in raising our children, faces things that aren’t what we planned for, that we have to adjust to. Sometimes you know you’re in Holland as soon as your child arrives in the world. Sometimes you learn you’re in Holland 3 or 13 or 30 years later. Some Holland is temporary and passes. Some Holland is lifelong. Some is awful and some is just unexpected. But it is all Holland.

I shared these twin essays with a group of parents several weeks ago and we had a great discussion about them. Some felt the addendum minimized the distinctive challenges of parenting a child with special needs. (To be fair, the original essay does that too—there are some helpful critiques online.) Some bristled at the idea that any divergence from one’s expectations, however large or tiny, can be put in the same generic bucket. It felt like stolen valor to them, as if a kid with an IEP is in the same category as a child who will need lifelong care.

Others pushed back against the pushback. Grief is grief, I remember one parent saying. Ross Gay defines grief as “metabolized change,” which means it can sidle up to us any time life goes differently than we expect. Of course, perspective can be helpful. Some hardships are, well, harder than others. But we so often treat compassion as a zero-sum game, keeping our frailty and pain to ourselves under the guise of “others have it worse.” I can tell you while standing in this field of tulips, your silence feels very isolating. And othering. 

On balance, I like the idea that most of us are in Holland. All the perfect Italy photos get oppressive after a while. They reinforce the cultural idea that Italy is the marker of success. Italy is the norm. Not just the norm, the pinnacle. If you’re in Italy, you’ve done it right. Congratulations. 

But then there’s the experience I’ve had, more times than I can count, of riding along on my bike—bikes are big in the Netherlands—and I pass someone I recognize, who just a little while earlier was bragging about their behind-the-scenes tour of the Uffizi Gallery. They duck their heads and hope I don’t see them, because dammit, they’re supposed to be in Italy. And for a minute I’m annoyed, because if more people just admitted they were in Holland, those of us who are willing to admit it would stop getting affirmed for our “bravery” from people who “could never do that.” 

But then my heart cracks open and I hop off the bike: Hey! You’re here too?!? All right then.

~

Your Turn

• What do you think of the Italy/Holland metaphor?

• How do you react to the idea that “it’s all Holland”?