Beginnings

7 min read

(Debbie, about 4 months old)

I was born Monday, April 4, 1955 in Burley, Idaho to Ardell and Shirley Jeppsen. I was the oldest of my two brothers and five sisters. This position in the family carried a lot of responsibility, and I was expected to accomplish tasks far above my years. It was almost as if I didn’t have a childhood.

(Mom and Debbie taking a nap)

My father was almost ten years older than my mother and was a high school teacher and basketball coach at the time of my birth. Mom was only 18 years old when I was born. I am sure that becoming a mother at such a young age was difficult for her. She suffered a nervous breakdown when I was 2 months old. She never had a very strong emotional constitution.

I don’t have a lot of memories growing up, very few before I started school. My parents bought a small farm near Ririe, Idaho, and moved there when I was about 3 years old. My dad began teaching Seminary in addition to running our small family farm. We were rather poor.

My parents would ask the butcher for scrap bones for our dog, but then would use them to make soup for us to eat. I don’t remember ever going hungry, because we worked hard on our farm and produced and canned a lot of our own food.

Almost all my time outside of school was spent with my brothers and sisters. My mom’s health was not good, especially when she was pregnant. Much of the time I was expected to do my chores and also care for my younger siblings. No outside friendships were encouraged or made possible, but a few occasions with other neighboring farm children. We didn’t go to Primary because it was in the middle of the week, and it took too much effort because of our location, so I never bonded with the girls in my class. When I got old enough I was allowed to play one church sport a year, because it was too hard on the family if I did more.

I learned to make do with whatever I had. We ate a lot of popcorn. We played a lot of card games. We played Monopoly. We watched “Saturday Night at the Movies,” on our old black and white TV.

But mostly, Peter, my younger brother and sibling closest to my age, and I played outside. I had kittens that I pretended were my babies. They hated being wrapped in an old blanket and held like a doll. I would pull an old red wagon round and round the yard of our old house playing like I was a pioneer crossing the plains with the poor kitties sadly cooperating until they managed to free themselves from their bundling and jump from my wagon.

Peter (6), Kathy (3), and Debbie (8)

I made mud pies with whatever I could get my hands on. At one point I was so convinced that they were delicious that I conned Peter into taking a bite of one. I can still recall the mud dripping down his chin and the horrified look on his face! We would sneakily trail our old mother cat for hours hoping she would lead us to her kittens. When we found them we would play with them. Then she would move them again, and the spying was repeated. We played for hours swimming in the canal behind our house. If we hadn’t had each other the loneliness would have been unbearable.

I left for Kindergarten one morning after Christmas and returned to find – much to my dismay – that Peter had sawed the leg off the little wooden table I had received with a tiny saw from his toy toolbox that he had been given for Christmas. He was surprised that I was angry with him because he was proud of his accomplishment and had worked so hard to saw it off. It had taken him the whole morning. Dad did a quick repair, but the table was forever wobbly thereafter.

We explored our farm and timber with all the passion of our young hearts. We built a straw fort back in the trees on the river back on our property. We were so little that we had to use an old baby buggy to transport the bails of straw to where we needed them. We tortured our babysitters by hiding in our apple trees and in the corn patch in our garden. We were inseparable. He was really the only friend I had. My other siblings were so much younger that my relationship with them growing up was one of caregiver.

There was a time when my parents left me to tend Peter while they hauled hay out in our field. He was still in diapers. I was only 20 months older than him. I couldn’t have been any older than 4. I remember having a hard time getting him on the diaper. Mom had a young man who had come to help them for the day come and peek through the window to check us. She told him not to let us see him. He reported back that I was straightening the table cloth. I must have been secretly terrified.

Peter, Debbie, and Kathy standing outside their home

Peter (7), Debbie (9), and Kathy (4) standing outside their home

When I was eight or nine years old I was cooking for a spud crew. I had to slide kitchen chairs up to the stove so I could reach. When the crew came in I had made a fried chicken dinner with mash potatoes. I didn’t know how to make the gravy yet, so mom made it when they came in. I had also tried to make a cake for dessert, but it had been a dismal failure because I had forgotten to grease and flour the cake pan and couldn’t get it out of the pan. I don’t know how I did it. I know I must have been watching my younger siblings too, because both of my parents were out in the field.

My life was like that. I was often left to pick up the slack, and when it didn’t go well, I got in trouble. One of my younger sisters called me “Mommy” and preferred me over our mom. If the house work wasn’t done or mom was sad or upset, I got in trouble, because I should have been able to do better. I was caught in the middle if my mom and dad were frustrated or upset. When I was 16 years old I was reprimanded and told that I should be able to run the household.

On the occasion that we needed punished, we were whipped. This often included cutting our own switch from a tree and bringing it to dad to use on our bottoms. Or he would use his belt. I learned to keep my hands out of the way ‘cause it would hurt like the dickens if you caught it across the knuckles.

(Paul, Kathy, Susan, Debbie holding Mary, Bonnie, Peter)

When I was about 12 years old I decided I wanted to go to church, even if mom wasn’t going. My dad was on the Stake High Council and served there for over 20 years, and was never there to help get us get to church. He was always frustrated when he got home to hear that none of us had gone. We were on the inactive lists at church. I decided that if I was going to go, I had to get there myself. I started to call our neighbors for a ride. When I got old enough to drive, I would get my then six younger brothers and sisters ready for church and take them myself – wrangling them through all the meetings and threatening to leave them there if they didn’t stay with me when it was time to go home.

I learned how to work hard. I learned to clean, cook and can food. I learned how to garden. I learned to be respectful. (We were never allowed to talk back to our parents.) I learned to put family first and how to take care of children. I learned to be grateful for what I had. I learned I could do hard things.

No matter how I try to paint my past there is a feeling of sadness over my childhood. But in contrast, I have a keen awareness of angels helping and holding me. It was a refiner’s fire that I am forever grateful for. It strengthened me and has made me what I am today.