English: Christmas cookies Deutsch: Weihnachtskekse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First Tennessee Bank took my thumbprint today and it made my stomach and neck and shoulders ache and tremble like guilty for a little while.

So here I am now, changing this whole piece that I first wrote, because something else happened and now I feel more guilty and more responsible and less competent and less caring, but also a need to think back and defend myself.

The apostle Paul felt stupid for defending himself, when he did in one of his letters (or more). I’m not a magnificent Christian, like Paul was, but I’m insecure, like Paul was, so here I go, playing defense.

I’ll leave in the part about feeling responsible, so much so that I gave a sick woman almost my last $5 today, not out of any noble motive, but because I felt obligated.

When I was walking to get the cash, somebody else met me in the parking lot and asked if I was going to St. Therese church Saturday, could I pick up a blanket for her mama. I’ll leave that part in the story for today too.

That’s Just the Way It Is and we should take Bruce Hornsby‘s advice and not say “get a job” just for fun (I guess). Sometimes people can’t find a job anymore, but I still resented giving away my pretty warm afghan blanket, with green and white roses woven in, to somebody else’s mama. (Don’t you think Jesus felt weary, when He said “the poor you will always have with you”?)

I gave away that blanket because I did not feel like driving to St. Therese to get somebody else a blanket this weekend. The weak and poor and needy can wear you out, and now I’m weak and poor and needy myself, missing a blanket. I’m supposed to be more grown-up, not still hanging on to transitional objects for security.

Anyway, I’m about to go home soon and watch some TV, Lord willing. My TV is like a service pet and keeps me company.

Sometimes life makes you feel like wearin’ leech socks, but I feel like a leech myself, always trying to feel worthwhile and leech-less, comin’ or goin’. (Be sure of this, like a friend told me, God will make sure you see the other side of the story, if you’re unlucky (and lucky).

There’s no special virtue in being poor, I’m learning. And the Bible says the wicked prosper, so that’s not the best part of the deal either.

The best financial place to be is somewhere in the middle, because that’s where the backbone is and from there, all things radiate.

Back to the bank story. When I went to cash that check to pay a bill, the bank teller held out this black plastic thing with some slick waxy-feeling stuff in it. She said I had to put my thumb in that container and then put my thumbprint on that check, because some people steal checks and try to cash them, so thumbprints help the bank track thieves.

So now, my thumbprint is on an important piece of paper, floating around somewhere in banker space.

Did you ever wonder why Jesus let Judas Iscariot run the bank, since Jesus knows all things, and Jesus knew Judas Iscariot was a thief?

What has happened? What has happened to the days when all the thumbprints we had to worry about were the ones on Christmas cookies? I love those thumbprint cookies, the cookie part, not the too-sweet icing part. What’s wrong with me, wishing for a perfect cookie?

Now let me do what Paul did and feel stupid defending myself, but stupid is better than worthless: I used to be a bank teller, a newspaper reporter and a library clerk, competent and capable and went to jobs daily, and sometimes at night, like when I had to go to a lake late one night, to report on a drowned body being dragged up…or another night, when there was an armed robbery at Hardwick Farms, here in Cleveland, Tennessee. (One of the robbers became a Christian later).

There are more capable stories to tell, but no more room at the inn right now.

Let me try to think about getting back to the capable place.

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English: Breakfast with bread, butter, jam, fried eggs, bacon, tomato, orange juice and coffee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There at the white with red stripe enamel table and red leatherette chairs, our granddaddy sat with us, playing Checkers or Blackjack, never for money and always for fun. Daddy Evans always looked happy.

When I was around nine or 10 years old, he and I were playing Blackjack at that kitchen table one time. I held 19 in my hand. Still, just for fun, I asked for another card, taking that wild child-like chance, to reach the magic number, 21. That time, Daddy Evans dealt out an Ace. We both laughed and smiled.

The little General Electric refrigerator sat behind us, cooling things, like milk in real glass bottles, Meadow Gold, pure, and cold, the way glass bottles keep milk so deliciously cold. That little refrigerator had legs and a rectangular body and something round on top.

It was shaped liked a person, holding many good things, like the milk in glass bottles and real butter. Our granddad liked real butter, not margarine.

Mama Evans, Daddy Evans’ wife (our paternal grandmother) made real homemade bread, in a long oval-shaped wooden bowl. That bowl is still in our family.

It was so warm and inviting, smelling that bread baking. Our favorite time was when the bread was just out of the oven, with the butter softened already, at room temperature. That warm homemade bread with butter melting…just imagine it. It’s almost too good to be true, isn’t it?

But we put the soft real butter on Mama Evans’ homemade bread, just the right texture. Mama Evans cut the bread in thick slices, but not too thick, for the real butter. Such a completely wonderful memory, that warm bread, just out of the oven, with melting butter.

You could sit at the white enamel table with the red stripe and see out the kitchen window, where glorious pine trees stood and the roses Mama Evans loved, in so many colors…in a round garden, when it was spring or summer, years later. I remember the holidays most, when we went to our grandparents’ for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Mama and Daddy Evans loved the wild outdoors and the cultivated outdoors too. Daddy Evans built a miniature log cabin for Mama Evans, near their place. It was our place, too. They loved us. The little cabin was so delicate and pretty and subtle, like our Mama Evans, but strong and sturdy too, like our Daddy Evans.

Mama and Daddy Evans’ home, in Oxford, Alabama, was so wonderful, with knotted-pine paneling in the den and one pale green bedroom, with an eggshell-white, hand-crocheted, bedspread. The Singer sewing machine sat in the pastel yellow bedroom. The sewing machine wasn’t electric. Mama Evans used her foot to make it go. One time, Mama Evans made me a pink corduroy jumper and matching blouse. Another time, she made homemade cookies, when it was my turn to bring cookies to my Brownies (before Girl Scouts) meeting.

Every morning at our grandparent’s home, coffee perked from a shiny silver-like electric coffee pot, so elegant…with a long, curved spout, the aroma of coffee filling the rooms, which had real wood floors. Mama Evans collected elegant teacups.

Daddy Evans liked creamer in his coffee, later. We took turns spooning the powdery creamer into Daddy Evans’ hot coffee, watching that creamer dissolve, into peace and happiness and wild contentment.

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