Chapter 5: Sundays

"Now the winter seemed long. Laura and Mary began to be tired of staying always in the house. Especially on Sundays, the time went so slowly.

Every Sunday Mary and Laura were dressed from the skin out in their best clothes, with fresh ribbons in their hair. They were clean, because the had their baths on Saturday night.

On Sundays Mary and Laura must not run or shout or be noisy in their play. Mary could not sew on her nine-patch quilt, and Laura could not knit on the tiny mittens she was making for Baby Carrie. They might look quietly at their paper dolls, but they must not make anything new for them. They were not allowed to sew on doll clothes, not even with pins."

Sunday is a hard day for Laura to sit still through, especially in the winter. One day, late in the afternoon, she begins running and shouting with Jack. Pa tells her to sit down in a chair, and instead of doing it nicely, Laura cries and kicks the chair with her heels. Pa gathers her in his arms and tells her the story of "Grandpa's Sled and the Pig."

After the story, Laura and Mary lay in bed and listen to Pa play on his fiddle until they fall asleep. In the morning, it is Laura's birthday. She gets her birthday spankings from Pa and 5 little cakes from Ma, one for each year. Mary gives her a new dress she made for Charlotte while Laura thought she was working on her quilt.

Thoughts...
I can readily identify both with Laura's frustration on the restraints of Sundays, and her parents' struggles to keep two lively young ladies content and well-behaved until the close of the Sabbath. It is a challenge to make the Sabbath a special day for children, not one just centered on a long list of don'ts. It's not as hard once you reach adulthood and all you want at the end of a long week is to sleep or catch up on some inspirational reading.

I wouldn't want to return to the rigid days described in Pa's story about his father and the pig (very funny!), but I do feel that we've lost some of the specialness about the Sabbath. It's the day God writes us in His daily planner for a whole 24 hours, and that makes it too special to waste on everyday things.

"In the wintertime Pa filled and heaped the washtub with clean snow, and on the cookstove it melted to water, Then close by the warm stove, behind a screen made of a blanket over two chairs, Ma bathed Laura , and then she bathed Mary"

Of course it wouldn't do to be dirty on Sunday, so the whole family took a bath on Saturday night. The lucky one got to go first, but each family had a different hierarchy to decide who that lucky one was. Some washed from the littlest to the biggest. Some from the biggest to the littlest. Some chose to wash from cleanest to dirtiest, and some put the ones that squawked the loudest about it in first place. I would have been firmly in the "Mom always goes first camp."

This particular activity was an easy one for me to do because I have been doing it now and again all winter for various reasons. Sometimes it was because my pump wasn't working and I had to haul water by hand. Lately it's been because the drain pipe of the bathtub wasn't installed correctly and at the moment isn't even hooked up. Whatever the reason, I am an old pro at modern pioneer bathing. Of course, this isn't my only solution to the issue of cleanliness. Most often, I find myself inexplicably in Westby around bath time. Funny thing, that.

I know Pa started the process by filling a large kettle with snow to melt on the stove, but since I have a perfectly nice well, I decided hauling the water in a bucket was enough authenticity for now. My well is just outside the pump house, but the pipe comes through the floor, so I am able to pump my water in comfort. I use "I" loosely, because it is really the electric pump that does the work, but I have to plug it in, so you see I must suffer some.



Then it is inside to heat the water on the stove. While it heats, I can work on warming up the bathroom if the weather is chilly. When the water is nice and hot, I pour it in the "tub", a large storage container I bought to hold my winter gear. After that, I add enough cold water so I don't cook like a lobster. Washing is accomplished by pouring water from a large cup.

After the refreshing bath is completed, the tub is hauled outside and dumped. In pioneer days, if water were in short supply, after everyone in the family had bathed, I would wash the clothes in it, then use it to scrub the floors, then pour it on my garden. I'm glad I don't have to do that, because the water would be solid dirt by the time it got to my plants.