Sometimes it feels pointless to share my thoughts with people around us. Unless you have a child with complex medical needs you will never get it anyway.
But sharing allows me to temporarily lessen the burden I have to carry and that helps a lot.
We have been very fortunate in our miss fortune. We live in a country that provides our boy with excellent care without us going bankrupt, we have therapists provided by our province and we can borrow equipment that otherwise be out of our reach. At the same time we are facing a frightening future. Future full of decisions we don’t want to make, because the choices are between sucks less and sucks more and many of them are a just pretend choices handed to us by our “generous social support system”.
Until you have to deal with this system you live in the media portrayed picture. Where diversity is celebrated, special olympics have real companies as sponsors and evening news include some inspiring footage about overcoming setbacks. And then you land in “Holland instead of Italy” and your head starts spinning. You don’t know where to turn, so you run to your embassy for an advice. If you are lucky someone is there and allows you to make an appointment. You patiently wait for that hopeful meeting and you are thrilled to meet your ambassador. He is the first person who speaks your language and you get the feeling he really understands how you feel. His office is full of colorful brochures with happy children on the covers. You leave the meeting elevated, feeling like you can make it through living in this foreign place for the very first time, arms full of pretty leaflets. You even get a prepaid credit card to buy those rain coats and other gear that you surely didn’t expect to use during your planned stay in Italy. You feel overwhelmed with gratitude, proud to be Canadian.
Then you sit down and start reading. The brochures are written in a strange language full of “may, should, could”, but your euphoria quickly dismisses your doubts. You have the amazing prepaid card for those really unexpected purchases! The weather forecast calls for rain, so trip to get the rain gear is in order. The “Everything You Might Need For Living In Holland” store is just freaking amazing, so many helpful things to make your everyday living more bearable, almost normal one might say. You are conservative in your choices, nothing too fancy. You peaked at the price tags, but they are in a crazy currency you don’t understand the value of, plus the amount of zeros in each price you see is just too overwhelming anyway. The cashiers are not exactly helpful, but you suspect it’s a language barrier thing. The cash register dings and you present the clerk with your prepaid card. He swipes it, gives you a nervous smile and suggest you need another card to cover the outstanding balance. I will spare you the painfully embarrassing next 30 minutes in which you realize the prepaid card only pays for a single raincoat for your child, not the rain boots or the umbrella, let alone waterproof mittens, since it is so bloody cold in here all the time. You also suddenly remember what one of the brochures mentioned, you only get this prepaid card every five years. So the rain coat you are getting better fit your kid for five years, which is pretty impossible since he is only two, but he will be attending kindergarten in the same coat. Get your crystal ball out and pick the right size, because you only get one shot at this, returns or exchanges are freaking nightmare and require you to give them your coat for couple weeks and wait for the new one. It better not rain at that time, because you have no raincoat, just a colorful leaflet promising you one soon.
Your shock is complete when you realize the price is not some strange foreign currency, but your very own. I know back home the rain coat costs $50 maximum for a really decent one, but this is Holland and the rain coat has the label “for very special children”. That tag is etched in gold, for some reason, hence the price increase to $500. You shake your head in disbelief when a fellow shopper taps your shoulder. She has the “been there done that, you can go there too” attitude. She whispers to me that you can sometimes find a used coat at the very back of the store, in that corner that looked like employees only zone. She also pointed out that you might try traveling to the border town where there are stores for people from other countries and prices are similar to your home country, because they sell rain coats without golden tags.
Despite all this you do your very best to adjust to living in Holland. But you might start thinking about the future soon. You parental leave is ending and suddenly your family’s income is cut by 1/3, since you have to stay at home with your kid, because no daycare will take him, since he doesn’t speak Dutch. You know you are stuck, because there is no earthly way to teach him Dutch, even thou you so long for your child to learn at least some words, so he can have friends. For now he is sitting in his gold plated stroller in the corner of the playground only getting strange, sometimes curious looks from the locals. You used to be friendly and full of energy, but not any more. All the worries of where to find all the things you need for a decent life and how you can possibly pay for them since they all come with gold etched tags. All those worries sit on your shoulders. I started to sew my own clothes and refashion the clothes with the golden tag, so we can keep using them for as long as possible. I find myself hiding the golden tags sometimes to ease my husband’s burden, since he is the sole provider for our family.
We have been lucky lately. We’ve gotten money to pay for someone to help me deal with the unusual Dutch lifestyle, 6 hours a week, but that is more than zero. Also we visited a wonderful Dutch kid’s hotel and they gave us the option of our boy coming to stay for couple days so we can make day trips out of Holland. When I saw the envelope with the plane tickets I just couldn’t believe we would ever have a chance to leave Holland, ever.
I’m getting better at Dutch these days, I can have a very simple conversation about daily life and I can swear too. Unfortunately I still don’t seem to be able to remember the “big words” that government agencies use, but fellow parents, who landed in Holland just like us, showed me their little tricks and cue cards. This alone improved our life here tremendously. So thank you my fellow ladies living in Holland, you know who you are and you are a true inspiration. You amaze me how you found out about the ambassador’s secret stash of prepaid cards, how you made him sign important forms. I can only aspire to your detective skills and determination, so thank you Darlene and Bobbi, and the countless other. You make living in Holland an ok place to live.
ktojoy 