Friends would call, asking for us to come out and play.

This was before the social-calendar, play-date ritual that permeates Western Civilization today. In these long-ago days, a pal would either knock on the door or call you on the phone to ask if you could play.

On Saturday, we tried to get out of the house as soon as humanly possible before our mother could start assigning room-cleaning details. But Sunday was different. On Sunday, we could hang around our house and even entertain a few friends outside in pick-up football games or tag, but we couldn't go over to a friend's house. And the answer we got from our mother when we asked “Why not?” was always the same: “Because it's Sunday.”

We never asked our father follow-up questions to a response we didn't care for. For some reason, deep down in the DNA of every one of us (and every kid I have ever known), moms were much easier to debate than dads. At least our mom was easier. We never got very far with her, either, when she said No, but she at least humored us with the fantasy that, somehow, by employing Lincoln-esque rhetoric, we would be able to dissuade her position on everything from why we should buy a swimming pool or why we would be different from all those other kids and be responsible BB gun owners.

But even for her, “Because it's Sunday” was a debate-stopper.

The afternoons were downright laconic. A house full of 10 children in just about every stage of development imaginable — from young adult to teen to adolescent, as well as two parents and one uncle — is usually not the quietest place on earth.

But on Sunday, especially Sunday afternoon, there was a strange calmness that no other day of the week could ever duplicate. There might be an odd yard-work assignment and various preparations for the big Sunday dinner that was to come, but for the most part, there was quiet. The Sunday paper was read and re-read, there might be a John Wayne movie on the local TV station, but that was about it.

The example that our parents were trying to set was a biblically based, Church-sanctioned tradition of keeping the day set apart. Now, we weren't all on our knees in the living room, praying the rosary and wondering what all the “sinners” were up to that day. We were just living one day of the week in a throttled-down profile for no other reason other than “Because it's Sunday.”

Of course, I didn't think of it in that way when I was 10 and I wanted to go over to a friend's house and participate in some less-than-legal pyrotechnics. Then, I was thoroughly convinced that the permission my mother and father withheld on those Sunday afternoons had more to do with what I believed was their mission in life: to make sure I had as little fun as possible.

But as the afternoon dragged on, things began to pick up. People would start to show up. In my earliest years, those people were aunts, uncles and cousins who would drop by to see my parents and Uncle Rich. Our house was like a magnet in those days, and Sunday seemed to be the day when its magnetic charge was at its zenith.

As I got a little older and my brothers and sisters got a lot older, fiancees were brought around for further evaluation on Sundays. Then those fiancees turned into husbands and wives. Grandchildren soon followed. Through it all, Sunday at the house remained a staple.

And then, there was cork ball. Now, I never really understood cork ball. Being the youngest, I was banished to the position of “pig tail,” whose basic job description was chasing after cork balls that the catcher was too lazy to chase after himself. The ball itself was like a baseball with a leather cover, but it was much smaller and light as air. The “bat” was usually a sawed-off mop handle. It was all rather confusing, and when I finally reached the age where I might participate more fully, the rest of the family had grown too old to play cork ball.

Now, a game for Irishmen that includes wooden sticks in their hands usually comes to a bad end, but as I recall, there was no blood spilt during these games that transpired on the side yard of our house on Sunday afternoons.

By the latter half of the afternoon, there would be a sea change in the house. It started to fill up more and more with noise. There were kitchen preparations going on for the big Sunday dinner, and more people would begin to gather in the living room.

It was now too late to even think about going over to a friend's house to play, and as the sun began to set, the .003% of a child's brain that worries about school would usher forth thoughts of Monday-morning consequences when that weekend project did not receive the attention to detail that Sister Angela Claire would be expecting.

But Monday morning could wait. Sunday wasn't over yet. As late afternoon waned into early evening, our uncle, Father John, would recklessly drive a Chrysler (that needed a harbor pilot to maneuver it) up into our front driveway, and the next phase of our Sunday ritual would commence … Sunday dinner.

Robert Brennan writes from Los Angeles.