It's OK

My aunt Tricia was in the hospital once, a long time ago.  I remember her small daughter standing in the parking lot of the hospital, looking up at her mom's window singing her own song.  "It's o....k....it's o...k...."  It wasn't OK, but things worked out.  Tricia got better.

Forever after that, my friend Sarah and I would sing that little song whenever things got rough, as a sort of funny lullaby.  It always brought a smile through the tears.  When I was in college, I drove with my dear friend Gema to northern Indiana to attend a roommate's wedding.  Gema is Spanish, and her English was terrible at the time;  almost as bad as my Spanish.  We communicated through laughter and charades.  It was a blizzard the night we drove north, and my little VW Fox was no match for the icy roads.  In the darkness, the car skidded out of control.  I managed to veer off the freeway onto an exit ramp that went uphill, spinning the steering wheel to find purchase as we careened closer and closer to the edge of the road. We grazed the guardrail that separated us from the 30-foot drop of the overpass we were headed toward.  All the while we sailed over the ice, I chanted loudly, desperately, "It'sOK it'sOK it's OK it's OK it's OK!"

It wasn't OK, and we should have died that night, but we ended up in a fluffy, benign snowdrift instead of going over that edge.  Later, Gema and I would chant the "It's OK" mantra to lighten the mood if things ever got too serious.  It broke the language barrier.  Eventually, it became a funny story.

Tonight I found myself breathing deeply and repeating,

"It's OK."
"It's OK."
"It's OK."

And it's not.  But it will be.