Her Spirit

September 01, 2016

Her Spirit

Today was Oliver's Open House at school. He is starting 4th grade next week and this will be his 7th year at VES (he attended preschool for 2 years). He has the same wonderful teacher and the same wonderful aides. The classroom is the same and even though he wasn't thrilled to be back - he is my homebody - he knew right where to go. He also has one of my favorite teachers as his grade level teacher. She is passionate about inclusion. And some of my favorite peers are with him. It should be a good year for him. He is surrounded by people who love him.

After visiting his ID and 4th grade classrooms, we headed to the side of the school to see Waverly's tree. We are there almost daily to water it through the hot summer. Today was different. Wavey's absence was more profound. She was supposed to be there with us. But her spirit can be felt both at her tree and within the school. She left her mark within those walls. I am proud of the legacy she left behind, paving the way for her little brother and other children in the Intellectual Disability program.

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Welcome to Holland

By Emily Perl Kingsley

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.