Quirks of the Cosmos: Why not?

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

George Bernard Shaw

Little Prudeling adapted this cosmic saying and made it her own personal whine.

She compared her wholesome Tammy doll, who just didn’t stack up, to all her cousin’s glamorous Barbie dolls.

“Why not?” she would wail. “Why can they have Barbies and not me?”

Pre-Teen Prudette  checked her mailbox for a solid year. She finally conceded that, while her friend had gotten a letter from David Cassidy, he was ignoring P.T. Prudette’s lengthy, witty and sparkling fan letter.

“Why not?” she grumbled. “Why did he answer Jane’s letter and not mine?”

Mid-Teen Prudezilla, ignoring her status as shyest wallflower in high school, would rail at her parents.

“Why not? Why can’t I date till I am 16?”

Why nots in college applied to everything from not having wealthy parents so she wouldn’t have to do work study, to being flabbergasted that she couldn’t have a rich and full social life AND a 4.0 grade point.

Little by little over the years God dumped such an abundance of blessings on her head that she has to struggle to the surface if she wants to whimper ‘Why not-

-   a cure for her father’s Alzheimer’s

-   constant and steady work for the self-employed

-   perfect unity in church

-   a warning that while mothers  THINK the umbilical cord is cut at birth, it actually stretches across time and space.’

These days she looks out the window at the cold May wind and rain, and pulls her sweatshirt tightly.  She wonders, “Why not warm and springlike yet?”

Then she looks at the photos of the devastation and heartbreak in Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma, Japan.

And she has to ask, with a humble prayer,

“Why not me?”