Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: October 2022


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All saints and sinners.

We certainly never bought costumes. To invest in something, just to get free candy, that didn’t make any sense, my mother explained. So each year, we dressed as a shabbier version of ourselves. Maybe it was all a test. To go throughout our neighborhood. Knock on each door. Stand there, presenting the worst version of ourselves, hands reaching out, while they guessed who you were. They always knew. We knew everyone. Even in the early darkness of late October, we knew. We knew by the laughter. The screams. How fast we ran. How slow. We were one. All saints and sinners. And even with all this knowledge, we still asked the question, “Trick or Treat?” Because on this one night of the year, perhaps the only night, we were certain of the answer. We were certain of the sound the candy made as it dropped to the bottom of our paper sack.

France has made attempts at Halloween. The retailers put out a little bit of candy. We’ve even carved a pumpkin or two, never on the 31st, but the closest day of the weekend. But it’s never really caught on. It doesn’t have the history.

I brought back a sack of Halloween candy from the US. I gave it to the kids after explaining they had to say “Trick or Treat?” I didn’t know how to tell them that it was about so much more. It was neighborhoods and trust. Swinging open doors. It was the presentation of ourselves at our worst, and the acceptance given freely, joyfully (ourselves at our best.)

Of course they loved the candy. And somewhere in the sugar rush, past the open doors of our salon — open to a yard that became an afternoon baseball field, played with rules disguised as fun, I hope they felt it, this spirit of acceptance, this spirit of freedom, of joy! I believe they did. So this will be our tradition. This knowing. This certainty. Any day of the year.

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Our story.

Perhaps it was in the first grade that I was taught how precious time was. Mrs. Bergstrom stood from her desk and smoothed the lines in her pencil skirt. We wriggled in our seats. It was Wednesday afternoon, and we knew what was coming. She lined us up by the door. She waited for us to get rid of our squirms, opened the port to our freedom, and told us to go to our respective lavatories. Oh, the bathroom. Our shoulders sank. We always forgot about the bathroom. We elbowed each other under the flowing sinks. Hurry. Hurry. Then back in line. We walked on tip toes of excitement. Up the stairs. She turned to us with one last warning. She cocked her head and looked down with raised eyebrows that meant, “Respect this place.” And for the most part, we did. Maybe not to the extent that I revered it, with all my heart and soul and wiggling fingers that tried so hard to choose the right book, but it was the library after all.

Every Tuesday night. Snuggled with worry and anticipation, my mother and I read, and reread that week’s choice. I pulled on each letter. Each word. Each sentence. Gathered them in. Promising to never let go. And I didn’t. Even when I returned it the next day, I knew it would always be with me.

They tried to prepare us, I suppose. But I’m not sure it’s possible.

I slowed down my reading last night. Nearing the end of this book. Not quite ready to give in to the “Wednesday” that was approaching. I snuggled into the prayers said under my grandmother’s quilt, the sound of my mother reading, and I promised the words — promised us all — this was our story, and I would never let it go.

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Always with you.

I’m currently reading the third book in the Beartown series by Fredrick Backman — The Winners. All are set in Sweden, but easily could be any town, could be my town. Perched against my Alexandria Girls Hockey t-shirt (the one I bought this trip at Endless Treasures for $3.00) as I read, it IS my hometown.

Their collective identity is based upon the local hockey club. Some fit in. Some try to fit in. Others don’t fit in at all. All with their own struggles – trying to stay in, trying to get it, trying to figure out why they don’t even see the door.

I played on several teams in school. I liked sports. The activity. But maybe most of all, I wanted to wear the red and black. Not to stand out, but to blend into the sea of the town’s colors. To be accepted. Buoyed. To be identified as part of the team.

Because every town needs to label you with something… I could hear it, we all could hear it – whispers of divorce, trouble, “broken” — and I suppose that’s the one that disturbed me the most – this broken. How dare anyone decide how your home is standing. My home wasn’t broken. It changed, of course, but it stood, and I, we, deserved to wear the colors. So I put them on for volleyball, for basketball, for track. I wore them, fragile, scared, and hopeful. Hopeful that one day, I could call this, not just my home, but my hometown, all of it.

Wearing my Cardinal t-shirt in the south of France, that day has come. Not because “they” chose, but because I did. I claim the streets, paved and graveled. The houses grand and small. The neighbors on porches, waving from car windows. All trying their best, sometimes failing, sometimes winning, bobbing up and down in lakes of red and black. I remember everything. And while the struggles were often real, the treasures are indeed endless.

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Hello!

I thought about it a lot yesterday while I was painting our front gate — this gift of time.

My grandfather died my first year in college. I was studying creative writing. Words had always saved me, since I was a little girl. When I found out he was ill, I started writing. Reaching out with each letter. To save him. To save myself.

I picked up the community phone in our dorm. It was my Aunt Sandy who called to ask if it could be read at his funeral, this poem. The tears were streaming down my face. The two popular girls from South Dakota, their room adjacent to the community room, stood beside me, trying to catch the tears in their hands.

I was so brand new, in almost every way. The language I was living was filled with hellos, and on his paper, his poem, I was writing his goodbye. In one line I spoke of him wanting to repaint the barn, but he thought he wouldn’t live to see it dry. The words break me, even as I type it. Even as I painted the front gate. But in this cracking of my heart, this opening, it became so clear. I do have the time. Today. And the choice of how to fill it. The choice to live each moment, the best that I can.

I caught the paint drops in my hand and made our front gate just a little more welcoming. I did the same with my heart. This day, this time, this brand new, will not be wasted. It will be lived. And it will be beautiful! With each word I type, I know that I won’t be safe, but I will be saved.

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She fills the air.

There is a different sound that car wheels make when they are coming and when they are going. If you are one of the lucky ones that can’t hear it, perhaps you have never been left. 

It was a gravel driveway to my grandparent’s home. We had driven it with our maroon Chevy Impala countless times, and I can’t say that I heard anything. There is a comforting noise that trust makes. And it fills the air. 

After my father left, I began to hear everything. 

I listened to the wheels of my mother’s car navigate the long driveway. I memorized the sound of coming. When she backed up, all I could hear was my father’s red truck leaving on Van Dyke road. I ran around the farm, trying to dull the popping of gravel against rubber. But it haunted my head. Even the constant clanking of grandpa’s tools, of grandma’s dishes, couldn’t erase it. 

Hours later, I heard it. Her return. She came back. She always came back. And the joyful noise fills my heart to this day. The sound of trusting in someone. Believing in someone, perhaps even myself. Thanks to her, it fills the air.

And on this journey, this fabulous drive, maybe your "last chance Texaco" is really just another chance. You fill up, pull out, and go. And you can go. You can always go. You go on. You live. Always another chance. Where did you learn that? Maybe those loving arms that you call home. The same ones that let you go. And hold you now.
And on this journey, this fabulous drive, maybe your “last chance Texaco” is really just another chance. You fill up, pull out, and go. And you can go. You can always go. You go on. You live. Always another chance. Where did you learn that? Maybe those loving arms that you call home. The same ones that let you go. And hold you now.
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Wearing my world.

I bought them at Ragstock in Minneapolis. A midnight-lake blue pair of corduroys. They are soft, sure. Great fit, yes. But why did I love them so? I mean, I woke up thinking about them. Excited to put them on. Even for me, that’s a bit much.

Yesterday, in a half run, eager to get into the studio to work on my current painting, it occured to me. I’ve had these pants before.

I was in the 5th grade. Herberger’s was still downtown, not at the mall. My mom bought this pair of pants for me. It was the end of the season sale. Summer was about to begin. No one wanted corduroys. Up until then, I hadn’t really thought about fashion. But there was something about these pants. The color of Lake Latoka after sunset. I looked at the tag. There was a big red slash. And I was hopeful. I tried them on. My legs slipped in like water. “They feel like I’m swimming,” I told my mother. Not a big fan of the water, I’m not sure she understood the reference, but she did understand the love of a new garment against your skin. She checked the tag, and smiled. Handed them to the woman behind the counter, who folded them, and put them in a bag, and handed them to my smiling hands. 

I wore them almost every day that summer. These corduroy pants. Even to Valley Fair with my cousins. They couldn’t understand why I would wear such hot pants on a humid summer day. “Maybe she likes them,” my aunt explained. I smiled. That seemed to be enough for them. I didn’t know how to explain that these weren’t just pants, they were a symbol of something bigger. They were a symbol of when I asked for the world, my mom could give it to me. 

I sat in front of my painting, wearing my world. Confident. Vulnerable. Open. I will never let that go.

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Life’s couture.

Yesterday I saw a photographer on Youtube manipulating a photo to make it seem old — like it was a memory lived, I suppose. The technique took some skill, certainly. And while the end result was interesting, I thought it lacked what the photographer wanted — the depth of an actual experience.  That feeling is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to manufacture.  And I began to think, would our time be better spent trying to capture real experiences, by, well, living?

Once the thought was in my head, spinning around like a kid on a ferris wheel — my brain urging “go ’round again, go ’round again — I began to see it everywhere, this attempt at manufacturing a life. I saw it in the catalogs. Buy our ripped jeans! What if we did the work in the jeans we owned? Wore them in the yard, the garden? Hung tools from belts? Bent? Stretched? Bounced children on bent knees? Wore them thread bare by living? 

I saw the paint splattered jeans on the next page. Couldn’t we just actually paint? Splatter our own clothes with life experience? These are the colors that I want to live in — the colors flung from my own hand and heart. 

It was everywhere. This manufacturing. Even with so-called friends. This trying to fill the life-size holes within us, with “likes” and “followers.” Certainly it has its place. I use it here, every day. To connect. Keep the strings attached through time and distance. But nothing will ever replace human contact. Sitting outside on a sunny day, laughing so hard with friends that waists become rendered useless, bent over by the weight of joy and memory. Nothing can replace the feeling of hugging someone, just a little longer. A kiss of a hand. An empathetic, no words needed, smile. A wave that can’t be contained in the hand, but must be lifted in the air with feet jumping! 

I sit here typing, with paint on my shirt. It is valuable, not because it will sell in a catalog, but because I lived in it. Life’s couture. And I will again today! My heart, threadbare as my jeans, telling my brain, “let’s go ’round again, ’round again!!!”

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Reaching out. Reaching forward.

When searching in the yard for all the tennis balls, (that we use as baseballs, so I, as the pitcher, don’t get killed), the kids found something more. Behind the tool shed, past the wire fence, past the two lines of trees that separate us from our neighbors yard, sat a big dog, eagerly waiting with a yellow ball in his mouth.

I don’t know who hit the ball that far — well, I know it wasn’t Margaux, but there he sat, smiling with his discovery. They reached their hands through the fence. Faces pressed up against the wire to get full arm’s length. He crawled up slowly as if to say it was OK. Released the ball. And one of them threw it back over the trees. We couldn’t see where the ball landed, but the dog knew, and brought it back immediately. And so the unlikely game of fetch began. Through the fence. Through the trees. Over and over. It would be hard to say which side was more delighted.

Children find a way. Perhaps because they are open beyond fences. They see beyond the trees, the obstacles. They find the joy.

It’s easy to get stuck in life’s daily obstacles. Blocked by others. Trapped by our thoughts. But I don’t want to live like that. I want to see all the possibilities. See with the eyes of youth. Not the dim view of experience. Because sometimes, the past is kept well, in the past. And the clear view is led with hearts and hands reaching out, reaching forward. Beyond the fenced fear. Into the bright light of today. Smiling. Eager!

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Sunday. Sun day.

The grandkids now have an exchange student staying with them from Germany. Yesterday, in the afternoon sun, wearing the Minnesota Vikings caps we gave to them, we played our version of baseball in the backyard. Two French kids, one German, one American, wearing football caps, playing baseball in the south of France. Not a bad Sunday afternoon.

When I was in highschool, we called them foreign exchange students — but there was nothing foreign about this kid. He fit right into our cornucopia. After, what I loosely call, “the baseball game,” they wanted to go to my painting studio. He looked at everything. Each painting. Wanted to know the stories behind them. He was thoughtful and interested. After looking, touching, he went to one of the smallest paintings I have, right by the front door. He said with all certainty, “This one is my favorite.” I smiled at Charles, because we knew the story. 

When Charles was very young, he came into my studio. I had just started a new painting, immersed in the blue of a new sky. “But where is the sun?” he asked. I hadn’t gotten to the sun yet, so I told him it was coming. He watched, eagerly. And as it appeared, for one brief moment, I held his sun in my hands. 

“That’s Charles’ Sun,” we both said at the same time. Now, that might seem like a small thing, but it felt like magic. 

Most people gravitate to the largest of my paintings. The grand scene from New York – 8 feet tall. Or the people swimming in a 7′ sea. But this kid, German, but not foreign at all, went directly to Charles’ Sun, and he connected us all. 

It’s easy to find the differences. But really, we all just want a Sunday afternoon. With room to play. Room to grow. To learn. To connect. We can do this. For each other. For our world. We’re holding the sun in our hands.

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The go-ahead to go deep.

I couldn’t start a new book last night. I was still ruminating over the one I finished in the afternoon. I love to read. I can’t get enough of it! But sometimes, when it’s really good, I have to sit in it for a minute. Letting it wash over me, as I float through the wave of words. Bobbling, buoyed through sentences like:

“It was a form of naïveté, he thought, the way she continued to believe that all it took to get through life was grit. Sure, grit was critical, but it also took luck, and if luck wasn’t available, then help. Everyone needed help. But maybe because she’d never been offered any, she refused to believe in it.”

I started a new painting recently. I can’t tell you what it is yet. I don’t want the magic to slip away. It has to come slowly. Stroke by stroke. And this is a very personal painting. So I’m in deep. Really deep. Sometimes I think, with feelings, even the best feelings, we have this need to get through it. See how it all ends. And as filling as this is, to create a new life on canvas, sometimes it’s overwhelming. But I don’t want to rush through it. I want to feel it. I want to accept the help it offers. Because maybe that’s the best help of all — the allowing to feel, the go-ahead to go deep, and the assurance that you will be lifted, buoyed. Held. Helped. 

There are so many quotes I could give you from this last book I read, but I don’t want to rush you to my favorite parts. You should be able to experience it, just as I did. Word by word. Stroke by stroke. For the amount of books that I read, it is rare for me to recommend one. This one is “Lessons in Chemistry,” by Bonnie Garmus. 

I’m excited to paint again today. To feel it all. You will see it in good time. But today, I ask you to bobble along beside me. Assured. Held. Buoyed. In the deep.

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