Happy Fathers Day

About 2 weeks after Lucia was born, Jason called and told me he would be home in about an hour,  he had something special to do for Lu and me...   He got home about an hour and a half later and seemed disappointed.  I asked him if he found what he was looking for and he sadly remarked that it didn't work out..    He later told me he went on a search for tulips to plant in our front flower bed- he had planned to replace all our flowers with tons of grown and beautiful tulips.  If you don't know, as Jason didn't, you can't buy grown tulips to plant, you have to plant the bulbs and then they grow...   The story below was posted on a pks website about a mother and her special needs child,  after you read the story you'll understand.    We layed in bed one night reading it, hugging, crying and smiling at our new little baby that we snuggled in our arms.

Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley

When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guide books and make all your wonderful plans: the Coliseum, Michelangelo's David, the gondolas in Venice.  You may even 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 has 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 go out and buy new guide books.  And you learn a whole new language.  And you meet a whole 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 awhile and you catch your breath, you look around and begin to notice Holland has windmills- and Holland has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone one you know is busy coming and going from Italy...and they are 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 go away, because the loss of that dream is a 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, and very lovely things about Holland.

Jason, Lucia could not be a luckier little girl to have you as her daddy.  Happy Fathers Day to my husband and to the father of our precious little Lu.  We love you so much.