Que Sera Sera

When I was a just a little girl I asked my mother what will I be? Will I pretty, will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me:

Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be
The futures not our’s to see, que sera sera.

Or will it?

I’ve never subscribed to any life philosophy wholeheartedly – in the same way as I never read any one parenting book and thought ‘ah yes, there’s my bible!’ some stuff I read made me feel great, all smug and self satisfied that in this specific chapter at least me and the author were totally on the same wavelength. And as they were a published author and generally had letters after their name and a whole host of celebrity testimonials on the back of the book they must know what they were talking about, which meant I did too 🙂 This would generally last until the following chapter when I would fail to recognise myself quite so clearly within the pages and start to feel a slight unease. If I managed to reach a third or fourth chapter it was only in the interests of proving once and for all that the author was clearly a complete idiot who have never even met a child let alone parented one themselves, and if they had then they must have had an army of childcare to assist. The only book I ever started and never got cross with on that basis was ‘I’m okay – you’re a brat!’ which was excellent and still sits on my bookshelf but I stopped reading because the author identified with me to such a degree that I started to dislike her for being so sycophantic! Actually that was when I still only had one child who was under two so there is every chance I’d hate that one too if I started to re-read it.

Anyway, unusually I digress ;-).

So I quite like the idea of believing in fate, what will be will be and all that. But in the same way as I like autonomy I can’t help fiddling a little so leaving fate to get on with all on it’s own seems a tad risky. What if fate’s having an off day? Or prefers blondes? Or is busy with the calculator working out who’s number is up and forgets about me?

I quite like ‘Life is what you make it’ too. Except I can think of far too many examples of people who simply cannot be that messed up that they have made such utter rubbish existances for themselves. So I can’t subscribe to that one either really. There are friends of mine who just keep getting poo thrown at them day in day out and I can’t see why they deserve it and I certainly don’t think they subconsciously chose it so that theory doesn’t pan out for me.

I think I probably could best describe my view of it all as similar to the opening credits to Monsters Inc. If you’ve not seen it there are just loads of doors swinging by. All different colours, shapes, designs and sizes. Behind each one is a child’s room with scaring potential to make them scream to get the power generated by a scream. Clearly there are far, far too many to open all of them and take a peek, and you could just stay where you are watching the doors go by and enjoying the really rather funky soundtrack by Randy Newman and let someone else go exploring all the doors.

I can actually pinpoint most of the doors in my life so far that I opened. Some of them I slammed shut again, having either got scared or realised that I’d opened them in error, a couple I went quite far into the room and found an alternative exit and many, many more were exactly the right doors for me to choose and I loved where they led me.

Right now we are standing in a bit of a corridor. There is no way back to the original room we were in but there are a fair few doors to choose from to decide where we go next. We could go through the one which actually takes us back to a point back in the past, having decided that we took a wrong door somewhere and have another bash at it, climbing back up again to be where we *should* be now if we’d not gone wrong. But I always swore I’d never go back… This door is grey, safe, it’s as comforting as a cuddle and as familiar as watching Friends for the 17th time – you know all the jokes but you still laugh, you know how it all ends in 3 series time but you still gasp when one of the couples falls out and cross your fingers for it all to work out ok.

The next door is wildly exciting. It is sprayed with graffiti flowers and all different colours, it has windchimes hanging on it which tinkle tantalisingly in the breeze and would sing out with all their might if we opened the door and went through it. There are rainbows coming from underneath the door and other, unfamiliar scents and sounds. I know that if we go through that door we will experience things we’ve never even dreamt of before. But there’s a hitch with this door, it comes with a CAUTION sticker firmly applied. Come through here and you can’t come back, everything you know will be gone. It’s a gamble, a risk and a leap of faith. It’s the same sort of door that I went through when I fell pregnant with Davies – I knew that I’d never return to normal, I’d find a new normal – and then just when I thought I’d gotten used to that normal it would turn upside down and inside out again.

Inbetween these doors are a whole host of other doors – some of them will need some help to open them – you need to ask others for the key, or get someone stronger to hold it open while you drag all your suitcases through it. They are a combination of old and new, challenging and comforting, alien and familiar – they are like going to the same indian resturant you always go to but ordering something slightly different to normal.

Once before I’ve stood in this same corridor and we took the sparkling door, we opened it and stepped inside, but we did a bit of a Hansel and Gretel and we left a trail so we could find our way home again. We didn’t quite sever all ties. So when that path looked a bit rocky we headed back for home. Even as we did it we wondered if it was the right thing to do – should we have ventured further still or should we cut our losses. We went back. It was almost against our better judgement and we took a long time to accept and life with our decision. Suddenly we find ourselves with the opportunity to leap into the unknown yet again and this time we know that to do it properly we need to REALLY do it. And you know what, I have this funny feeling that we just might.

Doris, you might just have got it wrong after all, sometimes maybe life doesn’t happen to us, we grab it by the tits and shake it all about…