Recently, my sweet 3 year old developed a saying. At first glance, the saying is completely benign, even grammatically incorrect, but when you dig a little deeper, you realize that this mantra gives meaning to almost anything, and makes life a little bit more worth living.
You see, for the past year and a half, every knee scrape, every bad dream, would be met with the response from me, “Oh, Zach, it’s going to be okay, it will be fine, mommy is right here.” And Zach? Well, he’s taken it to a new level of meaning. Now, my son, in almost-Rastafarian form, replies to nearly everything with three simple words:
It Be Fine.
“Zach, we can’t go to the park right now, it’s raining.”
“It be fine.”
“Zach, that looked like it hurt! Are you okay?”
“It be fine.”
“Zach, you can’t have that candy until you eat a little more of that dinner!”
“Mom… It be fine.”
Nearly every situation is met with a careful grin and those three words… it be fine.
What started off as a little act of rebellion (the phrase, at one point, only came up when I’d tell him no to something, and he’d reassure me that it would be fine for him to do) became his life’s mantra. Every scrape, before I could kiss it, was typically met with a “Mom, it be fine.” Every situation where I worried a little that he might get hurt, he reminded me “It be fine.”
Then, every time I’d say “Oh, sweetheart, I have to finish this work, I can’t take you to the park until after nap,” he’d remind me, “it be fine.”
Stuck in such a rigid structure, his loose mantra reminded me that “it be fine” to take a short break. “It be fine” to cry over that diaper commercial. “It be fine” to forget the diet for a few minutes and eat the ice cream.
“It be fine” became more than a simple phrase for me. It became permission. Permission to let go. Permission to forgive my mistakes. Permission to embrace spontaneity. Permission to be just a little more free in life.
At first, people would give me funny looks, because I’d heard the phrase enough, pondered on it enough myself, that it started slipping out in conversation. When we recently went to visit my grandmother, the phrase caught on for her, and she started using it– again, as permission, as reassurance, as so many things. And when she started using it, she started sharing that meaning behind it with her friends. Some of them have decided to take on the mantra, as well, embracing the carefree nature of it.
What started as a simpler repetition of a phrase I was using to soothe him rapidly became a movement by friends and family, a desire to embrace that “what if?” What if we took the afternoon off to go to the park? What if we took that road trip that’s been on our minds for months? What if we ate that bar of chocolate? What if we ate dessert first? What if we stayed up a little later than usual to finish a movie we had been wanting to see? What if we turned at a different street and saw where it led? What if we simply said YES to something that we’d usually say no to?
So now, we use It Be Fine a little more often. We don’t just say it. I think all of us who know Zach and have heard him say “It Be Fine” are trying to live it a little more, too.
I mean, really, what better embodies what life is all about better than getting through the storms of life with that sort of confidence and belief? Because I really do know that no matter what path life takes Zach and I on, somehow, for the two of us… It Be Fine.
