My second tattoo has a much different meaning. I am sure everyone can relate to the eternity symbol, nearly everyone has been in love. This second tattoo will symbolize something that nobody else can possibly ever imagine or understand, unless, like me, they are living it.
When 3rd baby M was born (at home, accidentally...but that's a whole other blog entry) and after we were rushed to the hospital, my doctor came in, sat down beside my bed and held my hand. I remember the look in his eyes, as if he was terrified to speak. He began to tell me that they suspected that baby M had Down syndrome. I remember looking down at this perfect little being in my arms who was looking up at me with squinty, swollen eyes and thinking there was no way. They were wrong. They absolutely had to be wrong. I recall asking how this could have happened and all I remember hearing were the words "chromosomal abnormality" and "freak of nature". I know in my heart now that my doctor was at a loss as to how to explain it to me from a medical standpoint, but that's all I took out of the 15 minute conversation. My womb was abnormal and my baby was a freak of nature.
In the days following his dramatic entrance to the world, I was in a fog. I merely existed day to day, having no clue what I was doing. Baby M was in an incubator on oxygen and was tube fed and I was helpess. I would even go as far as to say I felt completely useless as a Mother. I developed mastitis but refused to stop pumping, after all feeding him was really the only thing I could do properly at that point. I'm not sure how many days it had been since his birth, but I was sitting in the pump room one afternoon, hooked up like a Jersey cow, bawling my eyes out. I'm not sure what hurt more, the physical pain from the mastitis or the emotional heartbreak I was feeling, it hurt me right to my very core. There was a gentle knock at the door and the lactation consultant came in and sat down next to me. It was one of those moments were there was nothing but intense, raw emotion. This woman, Jean, whom I had only met a few times for a couple minutes each time, held me while I cried. I layed my head on her shoulder and cried like I had never cried before. She said nothing until I had stopped. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. A beautiful, colorful stationary with tulips on it. Printed on this beautiful tulip paper was a poem and I would like to share it.
Welcome to Holland
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 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.
For me, landing in Holland is definitely not what I had planned. I have shed many a tear over the fact that my trip to Italy was permanently cancelled. I have become a person I never thought I would have to be, a person I never wanted to become. I have met people I never wanted to meet. My entire world came crashing down on June 4th, 2003 and even though it's been rebuilt, it will never be the same again. Somehow, I have adapted and grown to love this person I have become. Before I could never have imagined my life with a son with Down syndrome and now I can't imagine life without him. He is my special boy and I love him to bits.
Interestingly, tulips have always been my favorite flower, even as a kid. As an adult my gardens were always full of tulips in the spring and I often bought myself tulips for inside the house once mine were dead and gone for another year. So I am getting a tattoo of a single tulip to forever mark my trip to Holland. It's beautiful here.
