after-church rituals, memoirs of an extinct childhood

The one thing I liked about church when I was little - and even when I was "older" - was the social aspect. I will admit I often found the sermons boring and long, but I loved seeing my friends and playing with the kids after church while our parents chatted. Sabbath school was alright, although even that tended to be a bit dry and repetitious, but it was the after church social time that I lived for! As soon as church was out, we'd be out on the playground, or up on "the rocks". The church and church school were on the same grounds, so there were a swing, slide, merry-go-round and jungle gym in the field next to the church. Up on a hill on the same property was what we called "the rocks". It was a big rock, with hazelnut bushes beside it, wild strawberries on the hill leading up to it, and ant hills everywhere. When the weather was nice, we'd be up there, eating strawberries, picking hazelnuts, bugging the ants, playing king of the hill or some other such kids games. It didn't matter if we were wearing our "sabbath best". I'm sure our mothers felt just a bit nervous about that, but we didn't care.

If we weren't at "the rocks" we were running around the church and school, or playing on the playground. We'd play hide and seek and tag or some combination of the above. We'd be out behind the church, up on the back steps, or out on the swing set. We'd find the first ripe wild strawberries of the season, or the first dandelion. Saskatoons were another favorite that were plentiful during the summer.

Sometimes we'd venture over onto the Shoops' or Blabeys' places - they were members of the church - looking for strawberries, or just a bit of a different setting. We were amused by the simplest things and games. We were content running around out in the field or among the trees, and always disappointed when our parents called us to go home.

Another part of the after-church ritual was trying to get our parents to invite someone over for lunch - or hoping to get invited somewhere else! We'd go to the Boyds' or the Andrews' or the Densmores'. The most common was going to my aunt and uncles, or they'd come to our place, or we'd all go to my grandparents place. My cousins were like brothers, because we saw them so much. Or sometimes we'd all go to the Andrews' and us three families would all hang out. All of us kids had a great time, and the Andrews had a pretty nice place for kids to play on. So we kids would be trying to arrange all this or get in on it after church, in our own little kid ways. And there was always the rides to arrange. If we were going to someone's house, we wanted to trade around so everyone could ride together. Most of us lived at least a little ways out of town, so it was a fair amount of time that we'd get to spend together. We'd trade a couple of the older kids for a couple of the younger kids, or girls for boys, or some such thing, however we decided to do it that day.

As we got older, there wasn't a lot that changed. We didn't go out on the playground, or up to "the rocks", as much, but there was still the political-social aspect. I liked church because of my friends. We'd sit together and write notes back and forth during the sermon, and there was still the "arranging", trying to get someone to come over or get invited somewhere else. We were good at "arranging" and "hinting". When I was a teenager, the favorite was to get our girl friends to come over and go horseback riding after lunch - although I sometimes felt like I was being used because we had horses. But maybe that was just teenage insecurities.

I got an email from Mom the other day, sending me a message and pictures from Whitney, my littlest brother who is almost 7. Part of the email was about these deer antlers that he found out behind the church one day. It made me sweetly nostalgic to realize that my younger syblings are now doing the same thing we did when we were kids - out exploring and playing after church. Maybe we never found deer antlers, but we definitely found our own treasures, and I was happy to realize that the younger ones are experiencing the same simple pleasures that I had when I was a kid. Hard to beat those after-church rituals!