Friday, April 24, 2009

Playing Church

After the garden slowed down a bit Mom starting looking for ways to help earn money. There was a store in our small town of Dundee that said they'd be happy to buy all the baked goods she could make. And our little kitchen turned into a bakery where Mom would spend hours baking bread, cinnamon rolls, and pecan tarts.

The first few days it was exciting to watch as she made all the delicious looking things, but after a while it became tiresome as she made the same things again and again. We would watch for a while but since it had to be perfect to sell, John and I couldn't help and we soon wandered off to find other things to occupy our time.

We enjoyed pretending to play church. I would get my doll all wrapped up in blankets and then we would sit on Mom's rocking chair and rock just as hard as we could pretending it's our buggy. After we rocked long enough we would arrive at church and go into our little bedroom and sit in the lower bunk of the bunkbed and sing loud and long trying to imitate the songs we'd sing in church. After that John would get up and preach for awhile, usually some silly little sermon that ended up with us giggling and laughing. (which was a part we did not copy from Amish church services where you wouldn't even think of smiling.)

We did this nearly everyday, and then one day after we had our rocking chair ride to church and got into our room I got the wonderful idea to open the bottom drawer of our dresser and use it for a church bench. We pulled it open and sat in it. Our weight was to much and the whole dresser tipped forward pinning us underneath, sending the kerosene lamp and everything else that had been setting on top crashing to the floor and breaking into pieces. We cried at the top of our lungs and Mom came hurrying in and lifted the dresser off of us. Amazingly we weren't hurt. Only frightened. She had us sit in the bunkbed while she cleaned up the mess so we wouldn't step on any broken glass.

Once everything was back in order she got us settled at our little table with our coloring books and went back to her baking.

6 comments:

  1. I remember playing church, too. We're Catholic and we'd make tiny Communion hosts out of bread. I loved playing school, too. Isn't it funny when we're small we want to do things the grown-ups do and when we're grown-ups, we want to nap and swing and do things children do!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just came across this blog while "browsing." Things Amish fascinate me, so I decided to stay and visit.

    This post brought back memories of my children playing church. They are all grown up now, but when they were younger, I would put them in the bathtub together, and they would take turns baptizing each other! That didn't always end too happily, but it makes me happy remembering. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello - I found your blog this week and enjoyed it so much, I had to start reading from the beginning! This story reminds me of the one my father told us. Our family is Lutheran. When Dad was little, his older brother would pay Dad to be the acolyte when they played church! Dad ended up in business, and my uncle later did become a pastor!

    ReplyDelete
  4. My children and grandchildren all played church, but their favorite thing was to play restaurant. My granddaughter Amanda would scribble my "order" on a piece of paper, and come back with torn pieces of green and yellow paper for my salad and mac and cheese. She'd run the bathroom tap until the water was hot and bring me "coffee" in her little silver mug. One day I heard her rattling around in the china closet after she'd brought me a plateful of tiddly-wink cookies. Now, my daughter (her mother) doesn't care for wine, so the only place Amanda ever had encountered wine was at our house or at church. She came into the kitchen with a wine glass in her hand and asked me, dead serious, if I'd like some "Blood of Christ" with my dessert. I thought my ears would blow off, I was trying so hard not to laugh! I explained that it was only Jesus' Blood in church; at home it was just plain wine.

    Kids!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just found your blog today and look forward to reading more. From the other comments I'm amazed how many others used to play church when they were kids! We used to play church when we came home from church too! My sisters each had a doll that had a white fancy dress. Sometimes the dolls would be married and other times they would be baptized. My brother who "preached" is actually a pastor now and another other brother played the "organ" built of cardboard boxes and building blocks. When we got home from school we used to play "school". We got some old school desks from somewhere and I was usually the teacher. Thanks for the memories! Great fun! Greetings from Toronto!

    ReplyDelete
  6. We used to play "Mass" when we were little: we would get a piece of bread & my mom's biscuit cutter & make little "hosts" out of it. Good memories!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for taking time to comment. I love hearing your thoughts.