Bad girls just wink at trouble
Here's to the Bad Girls, bless their hearts, who make all the Good Girls look good. There's one in every family. Everybody loves her, but hates how she acts. Her mother worries. Her grandmother prays. Her aunts and sisters all want to strangle her. And her nieces want to be just like her.
She makes tongues wag, heads shake, eyes roll and tempers flare. Why? Because she does flat-out as she pleases - and that doesn't please her family.
Among my grandmother's nine daughters, competition was fierce for the "bad" title.But nobody could out-bad my aunt "Bad Ruby." I don't really have a "Aunt Ruby." I changed the name out of respect for her children.
My earliest memory of my Aunt Ruby is from when I was 7. I woke to the sound of shouting. My grandmother was giving somebody a piece of her mind. I heard my Aunt Clara say to my mother, "She stayed out all night again!"
My grandmother stood at the sink, her back stiff as a fence post, channeling her fury into scrubbing a skillet.
Aunt Ruby sat hunched over a cup of coffee, hair tangled, eyes red, lipstick smeared. As the tirade continued, she looked up and met my eyes. Then a big, loopy grin dawned across her face and she winked.
I was in awe. How did she do that? I never smiled when I got in trouble. I surely didn't wink.
That was the difference between Ruby and her sisters. They all saw trouble. But she was the only one who winked at it. Years later when Aunt Ruby was dying, my mother was pretty old and not well herself. But she drove for 12 hours in a blizzard just to tell Ruby she loved her. I was glad they were close in those final hours. I only wished they had been so for a lifetime.
I am nearly as old now as they were then, a thought I find completely astounding. I spent a lot of years trying to be good only to realize that I wasn't good at it. If there were a way to make a mistake, to say the wrong thing, to hurt someone's feelings, to disappoint someone I loved, to fall on my face, I would find it.
Then one day I discovered grace. I learned it from my children. When I was bad, if I said I was sorry, they'd forgive me. Like magic, the distance I'd put between us would be gone.
In the days I have left, I want to spend less time trying to be good and instead learn to be more forgiving. Because there are only two differences, really, between Good Girls and Bad:
Good Girls worry too much about what people think. And Bad Girls have more fun.
Sharon Randall's column is distributed by Scripps Howard News Service. Contact her at sharonrandall.com.
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