Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…


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Hovering daily.

After a very confusing day in the library at Washington Elementary, I went home for some much needed clarification from my mother. Hovering between fiction and non-fiction, I asked her if Grandma Dynda, (who lived two lots down on Van Dyke Road) was real. “She’s a real person, of course, but not your real grandma.” So is she fiction or non-fiction?  Eyebrows up, and mouth partly open, the words didn’t come, so she just smiled at me. I think we both know we would spent much of our lives hovering in this magical place. 

My brain would come to understand most of the difference, but it’s my heart that’s still bouncing around the in-between. 

When we first got our cherry tree, and I was searching for a name, (because that’s what I do, name our trees and plants), something worthy and pure and sweet, I hopped the whitewash fence of Mark Twain and found Little Becky Thatcher. In bloom now in the spring of our front yard, she’s as real to me as any written word. As real as any love given two lots down. 

It will be a race between us and the magpies when the cherries come. And I like not knowing. Being mid-page. Hovering daily in the smile of this magical place. 

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Wings too.

There’s a tradition within the working kitchen — “Yes, Chef!” It acknowledges the task at hand and signifies the willingness to follow through. It’s what I say to the fluttering of my white-hatted heart, daily. 

I wasn’t feeling that well yesterday afternoon. But I was mid-paint, (a bird in the hand) and hadn’t I promised the page? Hadn’t I said to the other birds, today we welcome another? Yes. But most importantly, hadn’t I told myself that I could do it? 

I have no contract with my daily blog, nor my sketchbook. But I do have a commitment to my very core, to be who I am. To make something of the gift of the day. To wing myself above the obstacle and keep becoming. 

So when I say yes to the morning and the song in the trees and the keyboard and the brush, I am saying yes to myself. Yes to the chef, the boss of my being, that I am willing. I am able. 

The sun feathers day’s light through the window. My fingers wiggle, wings too, already hearing my heart’s yes.

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Being tulip.

Our kitchen table is noticeably naked this morning. I’ve had tulips on it for the last three weeks. Yesterday the last final stems ended in petal tears, and I let them go. I know it going in. And yet, oh, how I love them! And why not?! I suppose some choose to leave their tables bare. Never wanting to feel the absence. But I would not trade one curve of the stem. Waking to the dancer’s move, as it reaches for the morning sun. Each day a new position. Beauty, not with the promise of ever, but the grace of now. And I will keep choosing it. 

I hope I do the same. Keep reaching toward the love. The morning sun. My stem may be clunky, but my heart, let it ever be a tulip. 

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Face.

It’s not like I forget that I’m in France, but sometimes, I’m more reminded than others. Yesterday, sitting in on Dominique’s appointment, for a good five to ten minutes, I listened to him and his doctor talk about their extraordinary love of cheese. It was quite obvious I was no longer in Minnesota. 

I suppose it was at that moment that the bird in my brain took flight. 

If we’re lucky, we’re told quite often in our younger years that “you could be anything.” But maybe not so much with the “anywhere.” Perhaps that stems from the human fear of “others.” But I’ve never been sure why that’s so frightening. Because it’s only in the labeling of them being other that we in fact become one. 

And as my bird fluttered above all things cheese, I thought, I really like butter. I wondered if they could hear the laughter in my head above the flapping. 

Looking for a free page in my sketchbook, I came across the bird in flight that I had sketched in pencil. It could have been anyone’s dream, but it was hers. I don’t have to know her story, to celebrate the fact that she has a story. Be it butter or cheese, I just had to see her. See the hope disguised as the glint of light that reflects from the used-to-be tear. See the dream of flight not long perched on her beautiful head, soon to be mid-flap. And know that we belong. We. All. 

“And if you did, see not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…”

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Hope.

“You don’t feel it? The bird on your head?”

“Sure,” she smiled.

“It’s not too heavy?”

She wiped the bangs from her eyes and joyfully showed the gap between her front teeth.  “Hope won’t weigh me down.”

And off they skipped, barely touching the ground.

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I climb.

Spring arrived not only on the side of the hill, but also in my step. I can buy it at the grocery store. In fact I did just a few days before. And it was delicious. But it can’t match the thrill of finding asparagus, petite stalk by stalk, just off the pathway. 

And when I say hill, mountain would be closer to my leg’s truth. It is quite steep. And can be challenging. But while searching for the wild asparagus, I noticed on my second trip up, I hadn’t heard a thing from my thighs. Now, I’m sure they didn’t feel any different from the day before, but I think they knew the task. I think they knew they were as much a part of the hunt as my eyes that scanned, my back that bent, and my hands that grasped. I think to complain would have set them apart, so they marched silently up the hill, and joined in the victory when the asparagus omelette was made just hours later. 

It was my grandfather who always told me whenever I was in deep struggle, (often self imposed), to focus on someone else. And I’m sure I struggled with that as well, screaming like an angry ascending quad, but he was right. He was always right. It’s a lesson I keep learning. Sometimes more quickly than others. But I still celebrate in the victory. He would like that — because in doing so, I am also thinking of him. 

He comes the day. I’m about to join in. I climb. I hope. I reach. I pray. I curse. I kick. I laugh. I rest. I climb. I hope. 

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Taut.

She was not unlike most of the super powers that I watched on Saturday mornings. All were contained in the tightest of fashion. It’s why, I imagined they could move through the world so easily. And so it was with Mrs. Bergstrom. She stood in front of our first grade class at Washington Elementary. No loose ends. Her hair slicked back in a perfect bun. Her black pencil skirt smoothed without wrinkle, making it impossible to see where the chalkboard ended and her waist began. That’s how all the words got in, I thought. This seamless transition. And wasn’t that her superpower, all those words that she spelled out, sounded out, drew out. I wanted some of that power. Just to stand in all that “super” for even a moment. I leaned forward in my desk. Pulled up my neck. Straightened my back. Reached one leg behind the chair to make myself into the straightest line. To create a path for all that knowledge she was passing our way.

It’s easy to let a day go by. To let the passage of time slouch us over. To drape in the fray of worry and get caught in every dark moment. But that wasn’t how we were taught. Not how I was taught. So I wipe the chalk from my hands and smooth them down my skirt and I stand. I stand tall. “Gather it in,” my heart tells my brain — be taut — despair can only slide down, slide off. And it occurs to me how similar the words are. This taut and taught. And it straightens me. Lifts me. Letting go the fray, I Bergstrom to the front of the morning.  

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Making ruffles.

I still go to the mall with my mother. I don’t suppose we ever stop living with the ones we love. It’s only a matter of opening my closet door. Passing my hand along the draping of sleeves — each allowed the space to breathe as she taught me. We exchange silent ensemble ideas. I settle on the one where she clutches her imaginary pearls with more than approval. Pure excitement! And I am complete.

When it’s time to paint, I return the clothes to their rightful spaces and put on my splattered hoodie and pants, as if it were Sunday morning after sitting in my six year old’s white dress on a folding chair near the kitchen at Bethesda Lutheran. Smoothing out the drape with gloved hands long before and after Easter. Feeling to my very core the meaning of “good clothes.” 

I read recently that memories are the handrail of the stairs we continue to navigate. So it’s no surprise as I made my ascent in yesterday’s sketchbook, that the ruffles appeared on the woman’s portrait. White ruffles. My mother’s favorite. And didn’t they suit her. So. I hear her saying, “Ooh, I need to find that blouse.” And I smile. Heart strong, I grab the rail and climb. Forever making ruffles. 

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This is happiness.

It’s ironic, I suppose, that I’m always wishing for time to pass more slowly, but I often fight it while gathered within. I must admit I stumbled over the first pages. Perhaps even chapters. The book I’m reading encourages, in fact insists with the beautiful placement of each word, that the text be wandered slowly. To be paced under the heat of a summer sun, conserving the energy that each word consumes, as it makes its way from paper through hands, and head, finally resting in the heart. All the while with the promise, if you do tenderly barefoot each grassblade’s syllable, you will be lifted, winged to another time, another place, and fit directly in. Soaring mid the chaos and heartache with such profound joy, because just as the title says, THIS IS HAPPINESS.  

The question that’s always in the holster, “Well, what’s it about?”  I could no more answer that than if you asked the same of the day to come. Isn’t it always about living? My only hope is that I can take the same command of the day as I have come to in this book. To navigate with slow appreciation. 

Some will say, oh, people don’t read anymore. And I think, I’m people, aren’t I? And it doesn’t feel like I’m alone. I’m comforted in the fact that two of my most popular paintings of this bird series have been, not just with books, placed and stacked, but with people reading. (Over 80,000 likes on Pinterest gives me great hope.) Gives me, well, wings. And I think, I know, even for a few flaps, a few slow flutters, this indeed, is happiness. 

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Love’s measuring.

Even when I scrub it, there is proof that it is used, loved, every morning. The handle knows my palm. I open and tap out yesterday’s grounds through the kitchen window to fertilize Trini Lopez — the wintering lemon tree. I know how much water to add by the sound. The coffee is sprinkled gently by heart, along with the scrambled reciting of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, (often forgetting his last name, but always remembering “coffee spoons.”) I twist on the top and place it on the stove. The gas click click clicks in perfect rhythm and my morning’s measure is complete. 

It’s never just coffee. Nor the rising sun. It’s the accounting of love’s measure. No matter the night. This morning will be measured beginning with my coffee pot.  Life will offer you all kinds of starts. Recalling “what he said,” or “what she did,” or “how I should have,” or “when will I,”…. And I can easily get caught up in them all, until I realize I need an empty hand to pick up the handle that holds the coffee that starts my day, and I let everything else go. And so it begins….

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