Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: March 2024


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When angels come.

I was just a handful, a chubby handful of years older than the bunny that I found in the overgrown field next to our green house. I thought it was an ocean, these waves of green. I asked my mom if that was what colored our house. Yes, she said, always willing to fuel my imagination.  I didn’t touch it.  My grandfather had taught me that. Tell an adult, I heard in my head. I looked up and down the gravel road. Then across. Patsy was there on the stoop. Telephone in hand, stretched and tethered to the kitchen wall and pulled out the screen door. I wasn’t sure if she was an adult, but she rode the late bus, so it seemed ok. I found your bunny, I told her. She shook her head without putting the phone down. I pulled at her jeans. I pointed to the field. She wasn’t feeling my same sense of urgency. This had to be important. And it was all alone. She kept talking. I looked both ways for a traffic that was never there, and crossed back into the grass that reached my waist. Nothing looked the same. It all looked the same. Where was it? I couldn’t find it. Panic rolled from my eyes. I rode the waves. 

Why wasn’t it there? It had to be there!  I pleaded with my mom to help me find the bunny when she returned home from work. She walked with me for awhile. When it was clear that we weren’t going to find it, l could see it on her face. We never know when angels will come, or how long they are going to stay, she explained. In one swoop she took away my tears and gave me an angel — an angel bunny. It has stayed with me, all these years, through seas of green, over seas of blue, and I am never alone.

I had one of those dreams this morning, the kind so close to the light of day that it stays through breakfast. It was more of a visit really. I was here in France and saw him walking towards me — Bob Jones — a wonderful man, friend and once co-worker of my mother. He was all smiles and arms that reached out. He hugged me and told me everything is ok. She’s ok, he smiled. And I believed him — that’s what you do when angels come.

Happy Easter. 


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And flutter.

My latest commissioned piece made the journey from France to Texas, arriving safely in Lubbock yesterday. 

With the amount of bubble wrap that I use, you wouldn’t imagine that it still takes a lot of trust, but it does!  I always warn the recipient, it’s going to take some time. 

I suppose it’s always the letting go that tests us. Will the box survive the journey? Will the love hold?  But the magic only exists when released. And so we take the chances. Daily. On planes and breezes, heart strings and butterflies, it floats all around us.  Not to be captured, only enjoyed. 

Today I give thanks. And flutter. 


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Feeling

As one who has made their life and living by feeling everything, it was more than unsettling to see my right arm just dangling. The surgeon said it would take about 8 hours for my arm to wake up. They placed this fingered block of wood into a sling and sent me home from the hospital. I kept reaching for it with my left hand to make sure it was there. Dominique assured me that it would come back to life. He urged me not to be in a hurry. It will be painful, he said. It may sound crazy, but I needed to feel a little bit of that pain. As I’ve written before patience is a virtue it’s just not one of mine. So I waited and I waited. Was that a twinge? Wake up! And then my thumb moved a little. Is that my elbow? I wiggled my shoulder. I stared it. Dared it. Just as promised, it took the full eight hours, but it came back to life. It was mine again. I welcomed it back, pain and all.

I suppose it’s the same with the heart. Love will break you at times, but I always want to feel it. All of it. Even missing someone— that glorious ache—I welcome it. It’s only love. It lets me know I’m alive.

I wondered if I could write today. As I type to you slowly, I am assured that it has never come from my hand, only my heart. Can you feel it?


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Ever green.

They all looked the same to me — these green apples. But for some reason, my grandma would pick them and put them in brown paper sacks and write their names in bold magic marker. “So these are named Ivy? Just like my mother?” She smiled back at me. “They’re for your mother. She likes the sour ones.” “How do you know which ones are sour?” I asked. “I go to the tree.” I shook my head yes and folded the paper sack three times, just like my mother would do with my sack lunch when I started school. She started making them for me after the first day of first grade. The school lunch lady tried to make me eat a pickle. I never ate a school lunch again. My mother knew me. I carried my sack. 

We’re all so different. At first glance, you don’t see it. Most unfortunately, don’t even bother to look. And I get it. It can be exhausting. We are bombarded daily with face after face of the so-called-truth. But standing in this sea of green, I hear her, so easily, so simply, “go to the tree.” The source. The truth is always there. Some will try to disguise it with repetition, but it’s there. 

My mother didn’t look at all like Grandma Elsie, no she was full-on Grandpa Rueben. My mother was like the purple irises that grow along the road of my morning walk. So straight and tall. Such purpose in the long stem, and green fitted leaves. Just up the hill, there are few chubby little yellow ones, still with a bit of dirt from where they struggled through the earth, that’s my Grandma Elsie. Equally lovely. I smile as I pass because I saw the truth about them. And it was beautiful. It is beautiful.

Paperclipped to one of my books, my mom left for me the poem that begins…”Do not stand by my grave, and weep. I am not there…” Oh, how I know this to be true. She walks with me daily. They both do. Appearing on canvas and page. Coloring the side of the road. Fluttering by the blooms of spring. Ruffled around my neck. Beating in my heart. Growing in the trees. I know them. Still. 

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Keep playing.

The clothes pins we used were wooden. I wasn’t tall enough to hang anything on the line, nor old enough to wash clothes, but I did use them for a birthday party game. 

My mom said I could use the whole basement for my party. I taped the donkey on the side of the wall. Put dice on the table. And placed the glass jar beneath the chair, beside the bucket of clothes pins. I was kneeling on the chair with pin in hand when she walked in. She paused with a look that said I thought we talked about this. And we had. I wasn’t going to play in any of the games. Or if I played, I wasn’t going to win, because the winner got a prize — their own present. And it being my birthday, I was guaranteed to get enough. “I’m not practicing,” I assured her, “I’m happy to let someone else win.”  And I was. Truly. “I just like the sound it makes, when the wooden pin falls inside the glass.” She smiled at me. “The little clink, clunk…it’s like the glass is happy. It’s not empty anymore.” I didn’t really have to plead my case, my mother knew me. “Keep playing, forever,” she said. 

It’s funny how long I thought forever would be back then. 

I never had a clothesline until I moved to France. Our clothes dry in the breezes of Provence. Our clothes pins are plastic, and not really even pins anymore, but I still can hear the sound. Each memory of my mom bounces against the glass of my heart, clink, clank…and my heart is never empty.

Today is my birthday. I mention it only because I know that I have already won — so much. So I stand beside the chair and offer you to play. I want you to win on my birthday. I want you to hear the sounds of joy. The only way we outrun forever is to keep playing.  

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Wings.

I wouldn’t have written the piece, had she not so clearly given me the last line.

It was one of the first things I had professionally framed. I wrote it for my mother. They say write what you know. And what a privilege it was, to know her. I had a front row seat to all of it. 

Last night the shutters banged all night long. Just as my eyes were closing — Whaaaap!  Baaaaam!  Wood against concrete. Like the house was battling itself. I was mad at all of it – the wind, the noise, even my own ears. But after a little coffee, a little conversation, a locking open of the shutters, the anger subsided. Maybe it’s because the framed piece sits beside my desk. Maybe it’s because locked open, the shutters have stopped banging. Maybe it’s because I hear my mother’s voice in the wind saying we already survived this… But I’m smiling, because I had been given the last line so long ago. Given my wings.

The wind can and will keep blowing. One way or another, I am going to fly.

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Becoming she.

I often use the word she when making a card. Some have asked, “Who is this she?” “All of us,” I reply, “possibly even me.” I say possibly because I’m not always there yet, but it’s where I want to be, who I want to become. So I “she” myself into being. 

Change is rarely simple. And it can be frightening, this unknown territory. We want to know “what happens when…”; “what happens if…” But we aren’t always given the answers. Rarely even. What we’re given is the light coming through the crack of the door, and a choice — to let fear stop us, or to keep growing. Sometimes it becomes a space to let things go. Sometimes a pathway to move through. And the strongest of us — this she — is not afraid to do either. I am sometimes her. Each time I give her a voice. Write her. Paint her. The doors become a little less frightening. Even welcoming. And I become a little more she. 

It’s what I wish for all of us. To be a little less afraid. A little more open. They’re only doors after all — a passage to possibility — to becoming anything, anyone!

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Because we’re friends.

Schools had many names for it — we called it bombardment — and indeed it was by definition “a continuous attack.” The rules were fairly simple.Two teams separated by the line in the middle of the gym. A ton of red rubber balls — thrown at each other until no one was left standing. I don’t know if it was a lesson in aggression or empathy, or just to work off our excess energy before the afternoon Humanities courses. I loved sports, but I never liked this game. To win, (and I’m not even sure what “winning” was) you had to dish it out a lot harder than you received it. And maybe it’s silly, but I didn’t like the sound of rubber hitting flesh. Especially by my own hand. So I threw it out in the way I wanted to receive it. Was it winning? Not by definition, but I could sit next to the girl in the following class and know it wasn’t me that left the “Voit” mark on her thigh. 

It’s time for me to make new greeting cards. In today’s world of speed and technology, I like being a part of the act of kindness that still takes a slow hand. A card picked. A message written. An envelope addressed. A stamp adhered. Sealed. Posted. Sent. And when creating the messages on the cards, I think of not only what I’d like to say, but what I’d like to hear. (I hope I remember that in my daily conversations.) Before the new card is even printed, I have sent it in my heart and mind, many times. 

This one came easily — this “…because we’re friends.” And I know I’ve been blessed with the kindness of friendship — a bombardment really. Wishing the same for all, this is what I’m throwing out there — this friendship, as we walk the hallway on our way to Humanities. 

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Cinderella’s March.

It was my aunt Karolynn that led me through my first “March Madness.” It’s spring here in France. It won’t snow. We don’t follow basketball. But each year at this time, I am nestled in New Brighton, MN, in front of the television.

Visiting my cousins in this near Minneapolis suburb usually meant playing with my cousins — in the unfinished basement or outside. We only ever used the back door, which opened to both. 

But snow was falling as predicted this March, and I had just had surgery on my knee. My mom was working two hours away, so it fell on my aunt Karolynn to pick me up from the hospital. The leg-length plaster cast was not the full weight of it all. I worried about the school I was missing. The mom I was missing. The fact that my new Adidas track suit pants, purchased solely for this reason, ripped upon trying to stretch over my cast. And even though I had spent much time on summer visits to this place, I had never been alone with my aunt. In the wintertime. Immobile. I started to cry in the driveway. I placed my crutches under my already sore arms and began heading on the sidewalk to the back door. No, she said, and pointed to the front door. I was confused. I had never gone in the front door. It opened to the living room — the living room I had never sat in. She plopped me in Uncle Mike’s chair. Covered me with a blanket. Placed a tv tray around my legs. Brought me a bowl of Chicken Noodle soup – Campbell’s, not an off-brand. And she turned on the television. “It’s March Madness,” she said. I agreed before understanding it was the college basketball tournaments. I liked basketball, but mostly I liked when the announcer talked about the “Cinderella” teams — those with barely a chance, who came out shining! That would be me, I thought. I hoped. Half souped, warmed, the snow kept falling outside. But sitting in this front room, cared for, loved, I was indeed Cinderella. 

It was only a moment, I suppose, but it has stayed with me. Here in another country. A March filled with its own unique kind of madness circles around me, and I am safe. I will walk out the front door, and know that I am loved. 

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The bridge to everything.

Today is a packing day. I finished my recent commission and it’s time to send it to another country. To release something, put it in the hands of others, is no small thing. But that’s what it was made for, to reach this destination. So I have to let go. Trust — the final bridge to everything, I suppose. 

Trust has always been hard for me. As a child, I gave it away freely, this precious cargo, until one day, it was damaged. Beyond repair? I didn’t know. So I kept packing. Protecting that heart at all costs. Bubble wrapped. Shrink wrapped. Permission wrapped – tightly. Even behind all that protection, I guess I always knew this was not the final destination. 

It’s not lost on me that to reach our home, you have to cross a bridge, the Pont des trois sautets. I made that choice. To cross over. I trusted my heart. His. And found myself at home.

You will be asked today, tomorrow, to keep moving forward — to cross that bridge. Not as a punishment, but as a gift. There is so much beauty that lies ahead! 

It’s all about the choices we make. We can choose to stay or to cross over. We are offered these bridges as gifts. It’s not always easy to dare to cross over, to get through, to get beyond… but it is a choice. So many rivers to cross. And with one step, we choose… we decide to love, to be loved… we decide that we are actually worthy of the giving and receiving… we choose to live… and we cross over… we cross over to the beauty that lies ahead. What a journey!
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