Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright©, 2005
Time Machine: Memories of a Family
by
Julie Juppendahl
When my family lived in Chickasha, Oklahoma, I was eleven years old. Remembering Saturday
mornings causes mixed emotions. I remember one day waking up in my room, the spring air cold in
my nose as I uncovered my face. My room, usually pink in the daylight, was bluish-purple as the
sun rose. The vaguely shaped creatures on the white shelf in my room began to take the form of
stuffed animals. I strained my eyes to see what they were. Dark, cold mornings were warm under
my covers. The bed was comfortable at 7:00 a.m., I didn’t even want to move to stretch. I took a
deep breath. The early air was light and frosty, clean and pure. I heard sleepy movements on the
hallway rug outside my closed door. The steps were heavy. That was Dad.
I heard my mom in their bedroom. "Don’t burn the eggs this time – and put half a cup of milk in
them. Drain the grease from the bacon; don’t let it sit in the fat." Her voice got louder as Dad walked
further toward the kitchen.
"Okay, Janet," said Dad.
Pans clinked quietly and a sizzle in the kitchen woke me further from my sleep. The strong aroma of
bacon fat wafted into my room. Some smells in life bring happiness, and bacon was my messenger
of comfort.
My window curtains glowed light blue as the sun began to warm the earth outside. Untangling my t-
shirt, I slipped out of bed and put soft knit pants on. My feet were still cold as I dragged myself down
the hall. The plastic seat at the table felt slightly hard as I sat down, pulling my chair toward the
table. The bacon and eggs were placed near the centerpiece of dahlias. Janet had wanted to be
motherly last evening; she had worked in her flowerbed.
Quiet whispers began as my two brothers joined Dad in the kitchen.
It wasn’t just because Mom told him to, Dad always cooked with glad intent. The last of the bacon
was put on the big plate.
"Don’t...sha...ja...you dripped grease all the way from the kitchen," Mom scolded, as she joined us for
breakfast. She wore a full, white nightgown. Her face was puffy from sleep. Mom glanced around
as Dad sat down.
"Would you like to say the prayer, Julie?" She asked, smiling, her voice squeaking.
I said the prayer with my eyes squinting towards the breakfast. It was short; I could not think of
much to say so early in the morning. I said ‘amen’, and my tired hands grabbed the fork and filled
my plate with fluffy yellow eggs and hot bacon. Metal banged on plastic plates and glasses clunked
on the table. The bacon was crunchy and I loved the fatness of it. The eggs were soft. My view never
left my plate as I shoved the breakfast into my mouth in a most unladylike way. I did not like to
watch my family eat. They always got food on their mouths. The opposite of them, I kept a napkin
in one hand and wiped my mouth between bites. Hot breakfasts were great; too bad they did not
come with cereal boxes to use as walls around me.
Now, as I remember my family around the table, I think of how their futures turned out, and mine.
My dad and brothers were friends to me when I was in elementary school. We would go on daylong
fishing trips. I thought worms and fish were way too slimy to touch, so Dad and my brothers, Jerrod
and Josh, had to do everything for me. These fishing days were hot and humid, but I desperately
wanted to spend time with my dad and brothers. On bad weather days, we would wrestle or eat out
together. Sometimes, just my dad and I would eat out, and we would talk about our views on
everything in life. However, I was the oldest of the siblings and the first to grow away from the
family. This, of course, was natural; all kids in their pre-teens experience the stress of emotional and
physical changes. Once I was in Junior High, I began to notice the distance between Dad and me.
One day after school Dad said, "I was joking with Tim yesterday about how you couldn’t stand to
look at me." Tim was one of his 'buds'.
"I don’t mind looking at you. What do you mean?" I said, taking offense only because it sounded like
he was trying to accuse me of something he had completely imagined.
"When I drove you to school yesterday, you wouldn’t look at me, like you were embarrassed by me
or something."
"No, I was thinking about stuff, I wasn’t embarrassed by you," I answered. I left the conversation at
that.
The truth was that I had put makeup on that morning and felt awkward. I wanted to hide the fact I
was growing up. I did not want my parents to know that I had become interested in boys and fitting
in. I was a late bloomer compared to most of my friends and had decided to play catch up. I will
always remember the close relationship Dad and I had before my hormonal days, which lasted
through the rest of high school. Although I pushed my dad away during those years, I got closer to
my brothers.
My brothers always fought growing up, and I was the mediator. I would spend individual time with
each brother to keep down the contention. I taught Josh, who was six years younger than me, to ride
a bike.
"I’ll sit on the back of the seat, with my legs out. You won’t fall," I'd coaxed, trying to encourage him.
"You’re sure? Don’t let the bike fall over, I don’t know how to do this," he'd said, starting to petal the
old pink bike down the road, while I kept the bike up with my feet until he got going.
"You’re doing it! You’re riding the bike!" I yelled with excitement.
"What do you mean, I am?"
"Yeah, both of my legs are up. You’re doing it by yourself!"
He glanced down to see my feet. "I am, yes! I’m riding by myself!" He slowed the bike to a stop and
said, "Get off and I’ll try without you."
I stood on the curb and watched my little brother run with the bike, then jump on and pedals. Riding
great, he circled in the street and rode past me smiling. Josh was easily made happy.
Jerrod, on the other hand, was the opposite of Josh and me. He was three years younger than me and
had always been high-strung and not very social. Many times, Josh and I were entertained by
sneaking into Jerrod's room. It was entertaining because Jerrod had put self-made labels on
everything: Keep Out, Secret, and Jerrod’s. Josh and I would rip off the labels and open boxes.
Josh and I read through Jerrod's notebooks, which had pages full of moneymaking inventions. The
ideas were zany and unbelievable. What an imagination!
"A sidewalk that bounces, so people's feet are cushioned!" I yelled, reading aloud one idea.
Jerrod planned to make millions by inventing mind-boggling necessities. With his riches, he wanted
to live in a huge house (which he drew up blue-prints for) far away from civilization. After these
times of rummaging, Josh and I would quickly exit Jerrod's room, leaving his boxes obviously
disturbed.
"Ha, ha, ha." Josh laughed, one time, as he ran into my room. "He’s here!"
We hid in my closet and waited for Jerrod to make the discovery that we'd been in his room.
"Aarghh! Who was in my room!" We heard Jerrod yell, as we snickered in the closet, listening to our
mad brother’s footsteps as he opened bedroom doors trying to find the spy who had read his secret
files. Of course, he detected us and the sibling rivalry began. He forgave us by the end of the next
day and we hung out as friends again.
When I was eighteen, I began to feel normal around my dad again. My brothers matured and we
talked together well. My mom, however, was the hardest to figure out. I always had mixed thoughts
about her. She was high-strung, always yelling. Now, I think she was just unhappy in her marriage.
She was never in a good mood and had a hard time showing positive feelings. I remember once
when I was about thirteen, I had been in my mom’s room getting something and she pushed me onto
the bed and sat on me.
"I wish you would go crazy like me!" she yelled for about half an hour. I figured I was safer with this
psycho parent if I just laid there, still, beneath her petite body, while she yelled and pulled my hair.
My head was sore when I finally squeezed my way to freedom, ran into her bathroom, locked the
door and crawled out the window. I can only figure that, at that moment, she must have been
stressed out of her mind. When I told friends the story, because it was funny to portray my mom
shaking my hair in her fists, yelling, "I want you to go crazy!" my listeners’ eyes would widen in
disbelief, but they laughed because I did.
Another memory I've hung onto was the night I came home after midnight, when I was a junior in
high school taking an evening college course at the University of Oklahoma. Instead of going
straight home, I stopped at a friend’s house and we hung out for a while. I had never been out so late
before.
"Where were you?" my mom sobbed, when I got home.
"I was talking to Chris," I told her. "Sorry, I didn’t know it was so late." I felt bad to see her so
worried.
"You could have called," was all she said.
She wasn't angry; she didn't even want to punish me. She was probably glad to hear that I had been
doing something social and didn’t want to discourage me. I remember being glad to see a kind
emotion come from her. She did love me; it was just hard for her to show it.
When I thought back, then, to the Saturday morning breakfast table, which was just far enough into
the past to have been when things were somewhat normal, I wanted to be there again. I wanted to
ask each family member how that Saturday scene had changed to a more drastic later life. I wanted
to understand my parents and siblings.
Always the energetic, social child, I wanted to do everything. I worked hard in high school and went
to college, but my parents couldn’t support me monetarily. So, I worked while I attended school and
took a long time to graduate. The first few years of college, I was out-of-state pursuing these goals,
while my family went haywire with divorce and death.
I often wonder what made the family tension finally become so unbearable. Was my mom just too
high-strung for my sensitive Dad? My parents got a divorce during my second year in college.
"He would disappear for days. I just couldn’t handle it any longer," said my mom.
I wasn't able to ask my dad for his side of the story, because after the divorce, he ran from the family
and remarried. One year after the divorce, my mom married a guy that was seven years younger
and had the energy to keep up with her. My dad remarried quickly to a woman that was over ten
years older than he was and looked like she could be his mother. Dad also left the church we had
grown up in as a family and became a Jehovah’s Witness.
Although I had not seen Dad since I left for college, I held onto the memory of him as the good father
who was compassionate, and I hoped he would return to his normal self. My mom, it turned out, was
unhappy in her second marriage, too. However, she has stayed with him. Still high-strung; I guess
that is just her personality. A fighter, she went back to college and received a master’s degree, finding
employment at a local school.
My brother Jerrod dropped out of high school during our parents' divorce. "It was stupid," he said,
when I asked him why he did not stay in school. He thought the teachers couldn’t teach him
anything he didn’t know. He passed the GED and went to college to study computer science. He
never became a people-person, but everyone has his own personality.
"Mom and Dad just fought all the time," Jerrod told me, explaining that the situation between our
parents had gotten worse after I left for college.
I couldn’t ask Josh what happened to the family when I left. I would have to go back in time to ask
him. During the divorce, Josh committed suicide. He was thirteen and going through those confusing
teenage years. Mom explained to me that he was very temperamental during that time. He was
disturbed at his parents fighting and didn't understand Dad's leaving and abandoning the family so
often. Josh was not handling the family situation normally.
"He broke into a gas station and stole beer," Mom told me.
"What? Josh?" I'd replied. He had been such a good kid when I was home. He used to get after his
friends if they said a swear word.
During that time, to avoid witnessing the awful stories I heard over the phone, I didn't come home to
visit, not even for Christmas. Presently, I am glad I did not go home during those horrendous times.
I prefer to keep the image I have of my family before I left for college, before the full conflict my
family would experience had been unveiled.
While I was at college, my mom sent Josh to a school for juvenile delinquents. A few months later,
Josh was acting up at the center, so the doctors put him into an observation room. The doctors,
however, were not observing him, because he hung himself on the doorknob.
I wish I could go back to the Saturday breakfast table and ask Josh: "Do you see what your life is
going to become? Do you know you are going to die by your own hand? Why did you give up so easily?
We all have hard times; why didn’t you lead your own life?"
Of course, I wasn’t there so I don’t know what he was going through.
I wish I could talk to Jerrod at that same table. I'd say: "Why did you give up? Get through school, get
some friends and don’t be so unsociable."
I wish I could say to my Dad: "Don’t give up. Don’t leave the family and disappear. Do you see that
you are going to throw your life away and live like a useless nobody, always giving in to others?"
To my Mom I would say: "Calm down and be happy. I’m glad at least you fought for your life."
I remember the table, the breakfast with the entire family. I remember Dad waiting for everyone to
fill their own plates before he filled his. He was the calm one while Mom was the drill sergeant.
Memories become sweet through time. I let my bacon consume me; in my thoughts, I remember the
smell and my cold feet.
Contributor's Notes...
Julie Juppendahl is a Journalism graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. Writing is a
favorite hobby of hers.
