Que Sera Sera

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera

I hadn't heard that song in so long I couldn't even remember where I knew it. The Spanish made me at first think it was from Spanish class in high school. I remember Mr R (God, he was so nice to me, and I can't even remember his name. Apologies Mr. R.) saying it from time to time and me privately rolling my eyes. I was always more of the philosophy that I'll make whatever I need to happen happen, that just sitting back and taking life as it came was for people who didn't know how to take control of things and get things done.

Come on, I'd be pretty hard pressed to believe that any of us aren't idiots now, let alone when we were in high school.

Anyway...it still didn't fit. I can remember most of the songs we sang in high school (I have an odd habit of remembering anything which rhymes..."but look at our brother the youngest one / my arm's still a wing cause my shirt wasn't done" from our class play in first grade. If only the translation of kinematic constraints into linear algebra rhymed.)

Anyway, it wasn't from high school.

When I was five my brother Isaac was two. At that time my parents and many doctors were concerned he would never be well enough to attend normal school. He would cry for hours if he heard an ambulance or a fire truck. His motor skills were poor and he was developing slowly. I had no idea. Mommy and Daddy as they were then, had told me before he was born that new babies required a lot of patience and would not be like "the big kids." To be honest, it wasn't until we were both a lot older that I realized there was anything different about my brother at all. I thought all babies were just like him.

What I did know though was that Mom and Dad just didn't have time for the both of us. My parents had planned for enough time to take care of two normal children but my brother's needs were vast and pressing.

Even very simple tasks had been made very complicated between my brother's extreme sensitivity and the well-meant advice of doctors. My mother would lay my brother down for a nap, roll him over like the doctors said to, and he'd wake up, crying. Calming my hysterical brother was a reasonable timesink, and when he finally fell asleep my mom would roll him over as instructed and the system would start again. This process would continue for hours.

Most of my memories from that age in my home are of sitting on the couch at the foot of the stairs and waiting for Mom to come back downstairs so I could use paints or do whatever it was that I wasn't permitted to do without adult supervision.

Eventually my parents decided to start sending me to my maternal Grandma's house. I haven't any idea how often it was, time at that age worked something like this.

1) how long until christmas
2) how long until my birthday

It was probably a few days a week.

Anyway, Grandma was pretty nice to me. I ate a lot of Spaghetti-O's and I learned about how microwaves heat things non-uniformly. I used a small object like an artist's pallet to measure spaghetti...and then would just throw more in the pot anyway because I thought it was never enough. I drank juice out of plastic cups with animals on them that came off the side a little to form the handles.

Grandma brought me along shopping and sometimes asked me what I thought when she needed to choose between two objects. Green was my favourite color at that time. By the time I was in grade school the majority of Grandma's interior decorations were green. She still drives a toothpaste green Toyota.

Every night Grandma would sing to me before I went to sleep. They were old and familiar songs to her, I know "how much is that doggy in the window" was actually a pop hit when she was young, but these are songs which have been mostly forgotten with time. They were certainly novel to me.

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother "what will I be?
Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?"
My mother answered me

Que sera sera
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera sera

When I grew up, and fell in love
I asked my sweetheart "what lies ahead?
Will we have sunshine? Will we have rainbows?"
My sweetheart turned and said

Que sera sera
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera sera

Now I have children of my own
They ask me "mother, what will I be?
Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?"
I answer tenderly

Que sera sera
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera sera

Really, its not a bad philosophy for life.