[Doris Day singing "Que sera sera"]
Here's my lyric for the Transwoman Edition. To keep from running afoul of the copyright laws, I have to call this a parody, but it is certainly not meant to be disrespectful to either Doris Day or the trans community.
When I was just a little boy
I asked my mother, "What will I be?
"Will I be clever? Will I be rich?"
Here's what she said to 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 lover, "What lies ahead?
"When will the Rainbow fly everywhere?"
Here's what my lover said:
"Que sera sera" etc.
Now I'm a woman grown with children,
They ask their mother, "What will I be?
"Will I be female? Will I be male?"
I tell them tenderly:
"Que sera sera" etc.
What will be will be!
ObLinguistics: The phrase "que será será" is not grammatical Spanish (nor even, as "che sarà sarà", grammatical Italian), although it has been used for at least four hundred years in English as an expression of cheerful fatalism. It's the result of a word-for-word translation, or rather mistranslation, from Italian using the interrogative pronoun "what?" instead of the relative pronoun "what". The pseudo-Spanish version is an attempt to make it more intelligible, or at least pronounceable, to anglophones.
The they in the second verse is meant to be ambiguous between a pronoun of non-binary gender and a pronoun of unknown gender; in the third verse it can take either interpretation or be a straightforward plural.
