Left to Tell

This last week I read an amazing book that I have not been able to shake from my mind. It is called "Left to Tell" by Immaculee Ilibagiza. It is the true story of a woman who lives through the Rwandan Holocaust and finds it in her heart to forgive the people who slaughtered her people and brutally murdered her family. http://www.lefttotell.com/

This book made me ugly cry...a lot. I tried to compose myself but I couldn't uncrumple my face or slow my gasping sobs. I cried for her, I cried for her family, for the Tutsis, for the lost childhoods on both sides, for the hatred that grew so easily, for humankind and how easily everyday people can become monsters. I would like to say I have stopped crying (since it has been 4 days since I read the end of the book) but I haven't.

Who am I? Am I the kind of person who could kill my neighbor given such circumstances? Am I the person who would survive but have hatred in my heart? Could I, like Immaculee, forgive after I knew the horror of my family's last breaths? Would I die, facing my attackers with courage and even poise while facing a horrific death?

I don't know if I could forgive. I wish I could say that I could.

Since going to college, in many of my classes we have touched on the subject of everyday people becoming monsters when the right situation arose. College students who continued to press the button that they believed shocked a person in a neighboring room even though they heard shrieks of pain, cries for mercy, and eventually silence because an authority figure told them to. Studies with college students who were made "prison officers" of other college students who were playing the part of "prisoners" that had to be cut short because it began to have scary similarities to Guantanamo Bay after 2 weeks. And so many more. And now this book where people kill their neighbors and friends...why?, because they are of a different tribe, because they are scared, because their government told them to, because they listened to enough evil that they began to become evil themselves?

I said it in class and I say it now. I will not be a follower who blindly does what I am told. I have a brain and it is a pretty good one. I will use it. I will find courage to stand up for what I believe even when it is an unpopular belief. I may not be as strong as Immaculee, I may not be able to forgive the way she did, but I can remember what following blindly can do and I can find the courage to know when to go against what I am told.

Holla' Holland!

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.

For years I have known my plane landed in Holland. For four years Josh has done so well (for Josh) that I have been able to pretend that maybe at some point, someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, "Hey, what are you doing here? You are supposed to be in Italy." and hand me my ticket. Maybe if I worked hard enough while in Holland, maybe if I did everything right, maybe.....

There were even times that, in a Don Quixote moment, I saw windmills and thought they might be the leaning tower of Pisa.

But alas, I have been disillusioned. My son will never speak. I am never leaving Holland. And that is okay. It can be rather beautiful.