Guest Blogger #25
One of the things I regret about not having family near to us up here is being able to tap the well of experience, particularly when it comes to those every-day, technically challenging tasks that I have no talent for (installing a dishwasher, hanging a door, fixing a lawnmower, changing a light bulb, etc.).
Still, phone calls and e-mail are handy for mining their collective wisdom occasionally, and I haven't appreciated that more than when it came to my boy and my brother.
We'd taken John to specialists before kindergarten, but it wasn't until he was in the third grade that we understood he was more different than could be just accounted for by personality, and we not only entered the world of neurologists, psychologists, pharmacists and psychiatrists, we walked into the maze that is the support system for special needs kids in public schools. And I was fortunate enough to have a brother who's spent a quarter of a century in that field. He put up with my rants and my worries and my frustration and sometimes despair, and guided Julie and me through the procedures. Thanks again, Bill.
Bill lives with his wife, Ann, sons Brendan and Ryan (and now daughter Cory and granddaughter Launa) in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a small town east of Medford and just barely north of the California border, eight hours from here. As relatively close as we are (given that the rest of the family is spread out mostly in Arizona and Texas, with some in New York and now Wyoming), we might see each other only once a year, but that's always our "boy's weekend" (coming up soon) and it's quality and quantity time.
Welcome To Holland
By Bill Sigars
As brother to this author, I put time and thought into considering what I could contribute to this blog that I enjoy reading so much. I’ve learned a great deal from staff, students, and parents as a teacher and principal of special programs for students with disabilities over the past twenty-five years that has helped me become more of who I am. The most important learning for me is this:
All individuals regardless of their cognitive abilities deserve respect, contribute to our world, and help us keep hoping for a better day.
This poem “Welcome to Holland” by Emily Perl Kingsley describes my vision much better than I could. Enjoy!
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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 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 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’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 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.
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… 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’s 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.
10:53:45 AM 
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