Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: August 2023


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Collect.

It was our only safety net. We didn’t have the security of a cell phone. We memorized our home phone numbers, and carried with us the knowledge that in the unlikely event we missed the team bus on an away game for example, we could dial zero for the operator and she would place the call to our home, announce the collect call, asking our mothers “will you accept the charges?” The real security, I suppose, was knowing she always would.

Somehow I made it through my school days without making that call. Sure, there was the occasional mix-up. I sat alone in each of the school parking lots, waiting for the light blue Chevy Impala. And if she couldn’t come, there would be a sticky note on the main door of the school with instructions, like, — “Call Andria for a ride home.” I knew it was for me. We relied on our connections. Our human connections.

It’s hard to imagine now. We never leave home without our cell phones. How would we get anywhere? How would we get back? There is definitely an unmatched safety with the cell phone. But I may never feel as secure as I did back then. To count on someone like this is really pure magic. And it wasn’t just for rides. It was for everything. Secrets held. Emotions shared. Dreams dared. Confessions bared. Everything accepted without question — that was my mother.

The memories are sweet, but not without their own kind of pain. I will walk by a photograph and feel the squeezing of my heart. A glorious ache that I never want to end. “The charges of love,” I think, and smile. I take the bus, the plane, and travel this life. Secure in the knowledge that love will always come for me. And I may not be safe, but I will be saved.

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By name.

Left to my own devices each weekday of summer, I became quite adept at navigating this solo world of play. On the alternate days when I didn’t have a softball game, I figured out a way to play catch with myself. My mother bought a net that was strung between a metal square. If you threw the softball directly into the sweet spot it bounced directly back to you. I thought I was making a good decision when I placed the net in front of the garage. Because our driveway faced Van Dyke road, I didn’t want to throw the ball directly into what I loosely will call “traffic” (the random neighbor’s car).  Perhaps I overestimated my throwing accuracy. Hitting the target several times in a row, I gained the confidence to throw harder. I “wound up” and let the ball fly. Missing the target completely, the ball shattered the glass window of the garage door. 

I panicked. I looked around to see if anyone saw. There was no one there. Only my banana seat bike. It seemed to be the only answer. I dropped my glove and straddled the banana seat. Kicking the air. Trying desperately to keep up with the pedals as I raced down the hill toward the North End. The North End was the undeveloped land at the end of our neighborhood. Undeveloped by housing, but certainly overdeveloped in every school age kid’s mind that lived on this road. It was where every bad thing imagined or otherwise was sent to live. It was the threat of the unknown. The Bermuda Triangle of this small Minnesota town. Exactly the place where thieves or window breakers would go to hide.  I threw my bike into the side of the gravel pit and waited. 

It could have been hours, or a lifetime, I’m not sure how long. I imagined my story. It was robbers who did it. Certainly bad people who just wandered by while I was innocently playing. Or maybe it was one the Norton girls. Surely I could throw the blame at one of them. I kicked the dust with my bumper tennis shoes and thought and thought and thought. 

When I first heard my name called, I was sure it was the police. I held my breath. I heard it again. It became louder, but not angry. Almost sweet. Almost welcoming. I knew that voice. I got on my bike and rode towards it. My mother stood at the top of the hill. Every excuse fell from my heart and hands as I dropped my bike beside her on the gravel road. “I did it,” I said, hugging her nyloned work legs. “I know,” she said. We walked my bike back home.

Love will always call your name. Heart open, I walk the road. And listen.

Heart open, love called her name.
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S’more!

We took the bus from the roller rink to city park. Our sweaty legs were the only things grounding us to this world and the green pleather bus seats. We hovered between the exaltation of this finale to the fifth grade, and the silent wishing that this day would never end.

We jumped on picnic tables and rolled in the promise of summer grass. Our teachers started a fire and passed around graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey chocolate bars. Some of the boys lunged with the toasting skewers, fighting off the time. Then blackened their marshmallows in the fire. The girls roasted theirs to a delicate brown. The hot marshmallow melted the chocolate sandwiched between the graham crackers. We all shook our heads in agreement to the name — s’more! For that’s all we wanted — more!

Perhaps it was the crash of the sugar high that silenced us on the bus ride back to school, but I think it was more than that. The open windowed breezes blew through t-shirts and pony tails, as our heads rested on classmates’ shoulders. Maybe we knew how special this day was. How exotic to catch yourself in transition. The magic of this moment, no longer a fifth grader, not yet in junior high…just here, together, joyfully sweated in our exhaustive friendships of youth. I mean we used everything. We spared nothing. We gave each other every laugh. Every tear and fear. We faced every open window. Together. Knowing we had it all. Knowing there would be more.

I laughed the first time I saw them in the exotic aisle of the grocery store here in France. Hershey Bars. Exotic! And then I was transported in time and place. Tasting this magical day of so long ago, so far away. And in that moment, I thought, they got it right. What could be more magical than this? More exotic?

I stood silent. Catching myself in the between. Hovering in this space of brand new and brand familiar. My imaginary pony tail brushed across my face and I smiled.

I will give everything. And humbly shake my head in the agreement, “S’more!”

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Buttericked.

The differences were many between my grandma and my mother. Grandma Elsie was much more of a Ben Franklin to my mother’s Woolworth’s. Grandma Elsie was penny candy and Crazy Days!  Grab bags and colorful aisles. Rules were loose and chance abundant. As a young girl, this was delicious, this fluorescent lit certainty — but not for every day. 

Perhaps it wasn’t as flashy, but I loved a Saturday morning at Woolworth’s with my mother. We went just as it opened. While most of my schoolmates rested on elbows before the television, fueling themselves with cartoons and Captain Crunch, I sat at the table in the back of Woolworth’s, thumbing through the Butterick sewing patterns. The ladies pictured on the front of the patterns were so glamorous. They not only showed you what the dress would look like, but what they would do while wearing it. 

My mother loved to sew. And she was good at it. Time didn’t allow her to pay a great deal of attention. Most of our Saturday mornings were spent at the laundromat, or the grocery store. But on those occasions when she placed the dream above the duty, we sat for hours inventing the lives we would live in pure Butterick style. 

I didn’t know for years that you could actually buy the patterns. I thought it was more of a library. They were expensive. So we pocketed the ideas. The dreams. And mostly, the time together. 

I can easily and often be overcome with Ben Franklin brain. The fast paced, bright colored, crazy day, sugariness of it all. It’s then my heart sits me down. Slowly. And says, let’s not be so sure for a while. Let’s just sit here and thumb through the dream a bit. It’s in this peaceful uncertainty that I can feel it — my mother’s lotioned hand, grasping mine. The glorious time slows to a Butterick pace. And I just breathe. In perfect pattern. 

“Not all of her dreams came true, but she was never sorry she had them.”

“Not all of her dreams came true, but she was never sorry she had them.”


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Banked.

I’m not sure if the tellers were elevated, or if it was just my five year old vantage point, but everything at First National Bank of Alexandria seemed important. I held my mother’s left hand as she struggled to remove the deposit slip from her purse with her other. I needed her to balance me as my head circled the high ceilings. Everything smelled of wood and dollar bills. When the transaction was finished, the teller thanked my mom by name. She knows her, I thought. I was so impressed! She handed me a yellow safety sucker from the bowl behind her desk. (Red was my favorite, but I still said thank you.) 

I was taught that it wasn’t polite to stare, but I couldn’t look away. I could see just the tip of it. It was a flattened cardboard pig with tiny slots filled with coins. “Would you like one,” the teller asked, “to start saving?” More than anything, I thought, and gazed up at my mom to see if it was ok. She was smiling, so I agreed. She handed me the empty cardboard pig and I thought my heart would explode. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I was part of the transaction. And I felt as high as a First National ceiling.

My little pig got heavier with each dime and nickel slotted into place. Months later, when it was full, (from the random couch coin, or my weekly allowance), my mom asked if I wanted to put it in the bank. The real bank. I did, but I wanted to hold it for a while longer…feel the weight of it, the beautiful weight of my transactions. “Hold them as long as you need,” she said. 

It feels the same with memory. Each day I place one in a heart slot, and hold on. Banked. Feeling the beautiful weight of all the joy of my days. All the hands held. The smiles exchanged. The love passed back and forth. The comforting weight of my transactions. “Can you still feel it?” they ask. “More than anything,” I reply…”more than anything!”

Hold everything dear.

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The hand given.

The amount of reasons not to do it had to be plentiful. It could be too dry. Too wet. Too hot. Not warm enough. The tractor could fail. His body could fail. Grain prices out of his control. And yet, I never heard my grandfather complain. 

Sitting on his overalled lap at the card table he only spoke of the current hand he was playing. He and the chosen three adults laughed, accused, pointed, shook heads in knowing victory, slapped losing cards on the table, and kept playing. Oh how they loved to play cards after a full day of farming. And when the sun came up the next day, he walked past the card table, pocketed his pipe, and went to the field that was given, worked it accordingly, without complaint. Each year turning it from brown, to green, to gold. 

Yesterday at our family gathering, (a multi-national event), I was speaking with my German niece in English in the French countryside. “I don’t have enough time,” she said. “And I’m sort of afraid,” she continued. “And I could fail…” She offered up reason after reason not to paint, even though she claimed she wanted to. She was looking so far ahead. Beyond canvases painted, sold and shipped. A business created, and what if that failed, all before a brush or tube was even purchased. “You could just paint a picture,” I said. I could hear my grandfather’s voice deep from within.

He never played next year’s hand. He farmed in the day that was given. What a lesson to be learned. I remind myself constantly. Because I, at times, can get way too far ahead of myself as well… with all the what ifs of tomorrow. But really, we only have this day. And I choose to make something of it. 

It occurs to me as I’m typing this, the answer to one of her questions. I told her I was working in my favorite palette. Stroke by stroke in these moody, earthly colors. She asked why I loved it. It’s so clear to me today, it’s the hand I was given. 

Thank you, Grandpa.

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Newsprint and Windex.

.

It was only an hour each weekday. After school. I’d get off the bus at around 3:30pm and wait. Two picture windows faced our driveway. Some days, I could be distracted by The Brady Bunch, but the majority of those 60 minutes before my mom came home from work was spent waiting against those windows.

They taught us at Washington Elementary not to touch the glass windows that lined our classroom, because it was the janitor who would have to clean the windows dailly. And we didn’t want to make his job harder, did we? But seeing how it was my job to clean the windows at home each Thursday afternoon with newspaper and Windex, I wasn’t that concerned. I fogged the glass with my breath. Drew smiley faces. Smeared them away. Blew again. Then sad faces. Erased and blew. Challenged myself to tic-tac-toe. Continuously smearing cheek and fingers across the glass. Waiting. And waiting.

The gravel road always gave sufficient warning. The sound of the tires popping at 4:37pm would tell me that my mom was about to arrive. I’d hoist my top above my waist and wipe the window. Race to the garage entry. Fling the door. And I was saved.

She never mentioned it — the streaked glass. But of course she must have known. It wasn’t like my t-shirt wipe gave a proper cleaning. But that’s who she was — the person who allowed me to be me. Never made fun of my silly antics. She saw me. And loved me.

I smiled each Thursday afternoon as I took last week’s Echo and wiped it across the pane. It sparkled clean along with my heart. A fresh start. All waiting’s worries were washed away.

I see it now. So clearly. I thought she was saving me, daily, and she did, but even more importantly, she gave me the ability to save myself. A gift I continue to use. I smile out my morning window, and I am saved.

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Home economics.

Enjoy may be too strong a word, but my mother did get a real satisfaction from ironing. Combining this with the skills passed along to us by Mrs. Ballard and Miss Pfefferle, our home economics teachers at Central Junior High, I suppose it’s no surprise that today I iron everything, including my kitchen dish towels.

I think it was Miss Pfefferle that taught us to weave a pot holder. We had little iron grids and multi-colored loom loops that we weaved up and down. I thought they were beautiful! I don’t know how efficient they were — at this point I wasn’t really allowed to do any cooking, even though in Mrs. Ballard’s class we did learn how to make nougat and an apple pie (not the staples in my mom’s, nor my diet). But I was proud of my potholder. And I knew just who I wanted to give it to — my Grandma Elsie. It was a slight risk though – because she was an expert. She had her own loom afterall. Not a handheld one. No. This loom filled nearly the entire bedroom, upstairs next to the sewing room in her house. It seemed to be a combination of a church organ, a giant craft, and a carnival ride. She moved with her feet and her arms. I held onto her chubby waist from behind as it jiggled each “rag” into place. Everyone loved her woven rugs. They were gorgeous. And I wanted to be a part of it. I thought if I giggled along with each jiggle, that I indeed was. So, yes, to bring my humble woven potholder to this proven expert was surely a risk. I knew it didn’t compare. How could it? But it was my best attempt. It was an effort made. It contained her every jiggle, and I hoped, I prayed, I banked on, her feeling the love in that. With my two hands held flat and outward, I presented it to her. This gift. Her held tilted a little to one side. Both of our breaths held. She took it also with her two hands and clutched it to her heart. I beamed. Then suddenly my face was pressed against the potholder that pressed against her heart. I was inside the jiggle. She did feel the love, and gave it right back to me.

Some might laugh that I iron my dish towels. That I hang them straight. But it’s only out of love. Out of respect. For all the women that took the time to teach me the real value of this living — (it makes perfect sense now, this word economics). When I see something beautiful, create something beautiful, it is these women that I see. And I know, on my very best days, when I create something that you enjoy, that you find beautiful, that you too, are seeing them. You are inside the jiggle.

I saw something beautiful, and thought of you.
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The get-a-way car.


The common expression was “partners in crime.” While we didn’t commit any crimes together, my mother and I, (unless you consider the time in Las Vegas when we cashed in the abandoned chips we found on a casino floor), together we made it through some laughable and questionable times, during which she drove the get-a-way car.

My apologies to our North Dakota neighbors, but it was in Fargo the first two times we fled the scene. I was maybe 21 at the time, in search of my first real job after college. I had an interview in Fargo. I was suffering from kidney stones at the time. I knew if I had a flare-up, I wouldn’t be able to drive home. Plus, my mom said, “There’s West Acres.” (Malls always factored into our travel plans.)

I only made it through half the interview when my stone decided to make its presence known. I began to sweat. Nearly doubled over. No longer interested in making a good impression, only making it to the car. I stumbled my way into the back seat. She literally squealed the tires of our light blue Chevy Impala wagon, (purely to tell me she knew how badly I felt) , as I threw up in an empty Folgers can in the back seat. “We can do much better than West Acres,” she said. And I was saved.

My second get-a-way, around the same age, was for an interview of another kind — a date. A friend of a friend. “Oh, you’ll love him…” my friend tried to convince me. Unsuccessfully assured, I asked my mother to come with me. Always up for a road trip, she agreed. She dropped me off at the restaurant and went to the mall. My date, to put it mildly, was as uncomfortable as the stone on the last trip. I was standing outside the restaurant as he explained the intricate details of his expensive car. Unimpressed, I searched the parking lot. And then I saw it. That glorious light blue streak of safety. I waved and speed- walked to my mom’s car. She could see the horror on my face. There was no need to explain. She squealed the tires even louder out of the parking lot. “Well, just to make sure he knows…” she said. We laughed. Again, I was saved.

I mention it only because I thought about it all night. I haven’t had a kidney stone in years, but one came for a visit last night. The extraordinary pain kept me awake for the duration. I kept telling myself it won’t last, it won’t last. When we’re in pain, time seems forever. But when I think about how quickly it has all passed, the years between Fargo and France, I can hear the squeal of time. I can count on my “getting through,” my “getting away,” my “getting beyond,” the moment. 

Dominique is here now — my streak of blue — here always to race where needed. I smile. And I am saved.

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On her way.

It’s rarely a problem. I walk almost every day without incident. But it is annoying when it happens — when that one big fly decides that this is his path. And for some reason needs to tell you face to face. Flying at full speed toward your nose. Your eyes. Your mouth. Circling your head. Round and round. Poking. Prodding. Relentless. I wave my hands and shake my hair. To no avail. The buzzing rings in my ears and my pace quickens along with my heart. Finally, not being able to take another bzzzzz, I shout to seemingly no one in sight, “Oh for crying out loud!!! You have the whole world!”

As I said, this can be annoying, but what’s really unexceptable is when my own thoughts are the relentless buzz. I’m sure you’ve experienced it, when that thought gets stuck in your head (in your way). And your pesky brain plays it over and over. The tape of this ridiculous thought. Maybe it’s “but he said…” or “she did…” or “they never…” or “what if…”   Bzzzzzzzzzzz!  I’m not proud of it. And most of these glorious days, I can, and do, walk without incident. But the buzz…. Those sneaky thoughts that want to take over my path… So I look around. The sun. The open air. The house. The love within. The paint. The paper. The possibilities. The sugared fruits and comforted beds. The right now. My feet. My heart. The path. The beautiful rocky path… And I have to shout it to myself — “Oh for crying out loud!!!! You have the whole world!”  I do!!!!  

I laugh! And I’m on my way. 

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