Payback time

Yesterday a child asked me, "Miss Sandy, is it spring? The calendar says it's still winter."

I pointed to the pear tree in the next yard, dancing with white blossoms, then to the yellow daffodils across the street and finally to my azalea bushes whose pink flowers were signaling to humming birds that was safe to return.

"The calendar may say 'winter,' but Mother Nature says 'spring,'" I said.

"Is it the global warming?" Before I could give my opinion, he followed his own train of thought. "Maybe we'll get winter this summer," he said with the thoughtful air only 10-year-old boys can muster. Then he sighed. "AND we'll have lots of skeeters 'cause the winter didn't kill the eggs."

Isn't that always the way? Nature gives with one hand and snatches back with the other. A beautiful spring now versus the possibility of a too-hot summer, or a complete reversal of seasons. Warm weather heralding not just flowers and birds, but tornadoes and thunderstorms. A clement winter followed by hordes of mosquitoes and other pests.

In other words, nature is a big tease.

Life is like that, too. As Doris Day sings, "The party's over ... the piper must be paid."

In "The Lunch Club," Jane Ann has many wonderful years with the man she loves, only to have all the dire predictions about her May-December marriage come true.

Beth enjoys her comfortable lifestyle, but the price she pays is her independence.

Harriet doesn't want to bother her kids with her problems, and then when she needs them -- they can't be bothered.

And Melody learns that giving your heart too quickly can result in heartbreak.

Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it? Be assured that just like Nature, the rainbow and clear skies follow the storm.

Ecclesiastes 3:1: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."

I think The Byrds sang that one.