The House that Built Me

In my first year of architecture school at A&M, one of my very first assignments was to sketch my favorite piece of architecture. I was in a class full of first year students and had greatly overestimated my skills as an artist. The one and only time I was featured in class for an “honorable mention” was when I presented my sketch for the assignment, which was my house. (I should note that I was featured under the “needs improvement” presentation several times after that – sorry, Mom). Some of my favorite childhood memories are the parties my parents had throughout our 20-ish years in that house, and I couldn’t imagine any other piece of architecture to choose that had more sentimental meaning. My dad built the house for our little family when I was just a baby and I loved every inch of it. When I was in middle school, my mom let me paint the border to my room freehand which I thought was so cool – every 13-year-old girl’s dream. Miranda Lambert’s song “The House That Built Me” describes my feelings to a T. As we all get ready for the baby shower this weekend at my house in Pennsylvania, I hope that my kids feel about their house(s) the same as I feel about mine. There’s nothing that creates that feeling more than throwing a party with so many loved ones coming to celebrate Baby V!

Trying to describe my emotional attachment to my home is akin to trying to describe the emotional journey we’ve had to date with Down syndrome. Unless you walk through the threshold yourself, I couldn’t expect you to know the emotional roller coaster it takes you on. In the packets of information we got from the Maternal Fetal clinic after our first appointment, I found a poem that is well known among the Down syndrome and special needs community. It’s the most accurate portrayal of this path that we never expected to travel, and because of this poem, my dad affectionately calls the baby, Baby Holland.

“A Trip 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 Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After several 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 guidebooks. 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. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And 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 experience will never, ever, ever, go away. 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, the very lovely things about Holland.

 

Happy Weekend, all! And welcome to our journey to Holland…