オランダへようこそ

障害児を産み育てることについて。

先日の発達障害児の講演会のはじめに日詰先生が教えてくださった文章があります。
「オランダへようこそ」という、Emily Perl Kingsleyさんの詩です。

けっこう有名な文らしくさまざまなところで紹介されているようですが、転記して紹介します。難しい英語ではないので声に出して読んでみてください。

英語の苦手な方は、いろんな方が訳されているので上のリンクで検索してみてください。

「なるほど」という感じですが、実際に障害をもった子供を産み育てることになったギャップとはこういう感じなのでしょうか？

　では、中途障害はどうなのでしょう？「受容しろとか、あきらめろ」とかいっても無理な話ですが、なんとか付き合っていくしかないことには間違いありません。難しいことですが・・・。


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Welcome to Holland (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 guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelp 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 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 and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, 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 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, the very lovely things about Holland.

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