Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: April 2024


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Sanctuary.

When I went off to college, the first thing that surprised me was the noise. I had always studied in silence. I was alone for the most part. I didn’t turn on the television or stereo. I liked hearing the books I was reading, feeling the words I was writing. So the first few nights in the dorm were alarmingly loud. No one had headphones. Doors seemed to be quite optional. It was overwhelming to say the least. 

I wore a path to the library. And then I found the silent rooms. Doubled glass. No distractions. Glorious. My first sanctuary. It was there I could invent anything, even myself. I surrounded myself in words. Some lay quietly in yellowed pages. Others rearranged themselves and shot through my #2 pencil. It wasn’t the first time I heard my own voice, but it was the first I started to use it. 

I fear that some believe courage is only born out of chaos. That we must rise above all the noise with a clattering of our own. I suppose at times this could be necessary, but maybe the most bold is to listen to your own heart, your own mind. To brave the silence and find yourself.

There is a setting on my iphotos. It is called noise reduction. It takes away all the clutter to get at the real picture. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I have been hitting that button for most of my life. Sometimes I forget. I get caught up in all the clamor — “but he said, and she did, and they are!!!!!” It’s then I have to remove myself. Find my balance. Listen to the quiet. 

I whisper by hand into my sketchbook. And I am found. 

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Seems we just get started.

When the podcaster said he was going to be interviewing Carol Burnett, I could feel an extra step in my stride. I loved her. Hearing her voice, my feet walked faster, but my heart put on the brakes, because it wasn’t just true that “I loved her,” it was that “We loved her” – my mom and I. I wasn’t sure I could keep on listening. The pain was exquisite. It was no longer a Monday morning in France, it was Friday night, in Alexandria, Minnesota. In front of the tv. With my mom. Already prepared to laugh. Re-enacting last week’s episode. Draping ourselves in the curtains like “Went with the wind.” 

Through the years, some would say that my mom looked like Carol Burnett, and she would smile and tug on her earlobe. That was Carol Burnett’s signal to her grandmother, the woman who raised her. Even long after her grandmother had passed, she ended each show with a tug and song, “I’m so glad we had this time together…” 

Without my knowledge or permission, I was long into my walk. Still listening. Smiling. Then laughing. And just like the song stated, “Seems we just get started and before you know it, come’s the time we have to say so long.”  And I was home. 

I will never refuse the feelings. Tears, laughter, love, I carry them all. Even the hardest ones find their way to joy’s newest path. This morning is just getting started. I write the blog, my ear tug to the loves that got me here, and I begin — prepared to laugh. If you’re reading this, I’m so glad we have this time together.

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Like a floating Ginger.

She certainly wouldn’t have been considered a dancer, my grandma, but one could make the Ginger Rogers comparison quite easily. It is often said that Ms. Rogers not only did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. Yes, my grandpa worked hard, and he had the crops to prove it, but my aproned grandma kept longer hours, with nine children and 27 grandchildren pulling from behind. 

The thing is though, as it is with most who are excellent at their craft, the work is hidden. Like a floating Ginger, she moved from stove to sink to table to garden to clothesline to town. And I never caught a glimpse of the struggle. Of course it had to be there, but I never saw her rub her aching toes. I never heard her catch her breath while offering the love and attention we all demanded. 

There were no words like self-care then. But she was smart enough to take her personal time. And we were smart enough to know that it was at noon each weekday in front of the tv set to watch NBC’s Days of our Lives. Just as some of the Bohemians on neighboring farms were thought to be relatives, my cousins and I thought the same of the Hortons from Salem. I suppose I loved this time the most because I saw Grandma Elsie from the front. Her welcoming belly was not hidden by a steaming pot or bubbling kitchen sink. No, it was there to climb on, to hug, to rest against. We took our turns dancing with Ginger as Ma and Pa Horton looked on.

Working in my sketchbook, alone in the studio, I know these small paintings won’t sell, or even be seen, but as my hand stumbles through the pages, I know, without pressure, or even promise, it is my time to dance.  

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What’s taught is what’s known.

Miss McCarty said the composition must be typed. This was in my tenth grade year. A year when typewriters still existed. A year before I would take typing class. A year when senior girls would type your paper for ten dollars. A year when ten dollars coming out of my mother’s paycheck (a paycheck from the very school that requested the typed composition) could rock our monthly budget enough that something else had to be denied. A year when I couldn’t bear to be that rocking cause. 

Miss McCarty was, for the most part, terrifying. I sat in the front row because I thought it would be easier “to see it coming.” Oh, there were some teenage boys that tested her, but only once. I always finished my homework. Early. And I my handwriting was neat. It was my last class of the day. The final bell rang. I sat in my seat. I had two copies of my composition, not yet due for several days. One in cursive. One printed. “You can read it easily,” I tried to explain. “No,” she said. I could feel it welling, this one tear. I willed it not to escape. It rested on my eyelash. She tidied her desk. Stood up. Starting walking to the door. I stayed seated. “I don’t have it,” I quivered. “What?” she asked. “The ten dollars. I don’t have it.” She took the papers from me. Put them on her desk. “It has to be typed,” she said and walked me out the door. The tear let go and I walked across Jefferson Street.  

I don’t know if she paid for it. If she typed it herself. But when I returned to class the next day, it was sitting on my chair. Typed. I looked up at her. She wasn’t smiling, but she gave me a nod. And it was done. 

I turned it back in with the other students. I knew she didn’t want a gushing thank you. That wasn’t her style. 

She returned the graded papers. I received an A, and a note at the bottom — “You can always find a way.” I caught her eye and nodded. 

I’m typing with my left hand and two on my right. Ever healing. Ever grateful. Finding my way. 

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My best Elsie.

We learned pretty quickly on the power of the wave. I thought my Grandma Elsie knew everyone. And on her country road, she probably did know most. Any car that passed got the Elsie wave. I didn’t know of Queens or parades, but she had one that lingered a bit longer than most, accompanied with a slight head bob and smile. Then I saw my grandpa do the same. The smile was a bit tighter, but it was there. I started to mimic them. My favorite time was when summer car windows could be open. It was then you could really make it clear. Arm extended in the breeze with a little more of a shake. I asked my grandma at first if she knew them…she glanced in the rear view mirror…No, she said, but I saw them. I shook my head yes. I saw them too. And I got it.

I suppose it was at school where it became even more clear — the power of this hand extended, sometimes even waving. To be called on when what you had to say felt so important that you had to use your other hand to keep that wave from flying off of your shoulder — this was something to be seen.

We do not live in a waving culture. When I first moved to France and went out for walks, I would give the passersby my best Elsie almost to no response. And if it got any attention at all, it was to stop to see if I was in distress. I suppose a lesser Minnesotan might have abandoned the wave altogether, but I have kept it through the years. And every once in a while I get the return. It was on yesterday’s path, descending down a large hill, I saw her, a woman going up the gravel just inside the trees. I have passed her a few times this spring. We have exchanged smiles and bonjours, but it was yesterday, from afar, knowing our paths wouldn’t cross she waved. And not only with a healthy Elsie open shake, but first! I waved back! I’m still smiling.

I mention it because I guess we all want to be seen. And we can do that for each other. So easily. It takes so little to change someone’s day.

Some mornings these posts come very quickly to the page. The idea shoots from my hand in the air, squealing “ooooooh, oooooh!” Today it feels important to tell you that I see you! I hope you can feel the wave, and pass it on. Share your best “Elsie.”

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Heart’s yellow.

It’s no secret that I love yellow. It is my color of joy. It was my first lesson in brightening up my basement room. And not for the reason you may think. Yes it added more light. But it was more when I had to give up that room. That room that I chose for the first time. Picked the color of carpeting and bedspread. It held my dreams and secrets and heart promises made just before sleep, confirmed at dawn. All in yellow. It wasn’t the bedspread that I worried about losing. What if everything I had dreamed of in that space would also be taken away? I didn’t know. 

When my mom and I moved from apartment to apartment, the layouts and colors changed, but to my joyful surprise my heart’s yellow remained. What a comfort it was, is, to know it. 

People can take from you a lot of things. But not your heart. Oh, they can bruise it, almost break it at times, dull it, but you get to decide what remains. What is the color of your joy. Your soul. 

It has only been a week since my hand surgery. Only, I laugh. I want to paint. Standing in front of my joy in the studio, I know that I will. Soon. My fingers twitch in yellow heart promises, and dream of strokes to come. 

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Between bus and bell.

We knew nothing of love or roses, but that didn’t stop us from singing along with Donny Osmond on the counter of our fifth grade classroom. It was Miss Green who provided us with the 45 and the record player, solidifying that she was indeed not one of the elderly teachers that came before us, but she was one of us, still tethered to the longings of youth…and so she hummed along to Paper Roses. We moved the needle back again and again, allowing our hearts to spin as many times as they could before the first bell brought it all to a stop. 

It always came as a surprise — that morning bell. It seemed as if we had just stepped from the bus into the school, and it was over. Maybe we should have taken it as a warning, this fleeting time…and I didn’t. Not for years. Maybe no one does. But I’m trying to now. Not out of fear or desperation, but gratitude and respect. These gifts that we are given from moment to moment. Spectacular! 

Yesterday on my morning walk — the place where I hover between bus and bell — I saw this pink flower. I took a photo. I got down to really look at it. The pink petals were so lovely. “They look like paper, silk paper,” I thought. It’s funny how something so weightless can lift you. Transport you. I hummed the notes that formed a youthful string, a string that tethers me still. My heart sings as if no lessons have been learned. And I give thanks for the time. 

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In my best Malinda.


My first sleepover was in a hospital in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. I was only six years old. They wouldn’t let my mom stay in the room with me that night. I was terrified. I was armed only with my Golden Book — The Little China Pig, and my first baby baby doll, so brand new she was yet to be named.  The nurse in white cap, white dress, white nylons and shoes entered the room. She wiped the tears of my mom’s goodbye and said, “I’m Malinda, what’s your baby’s name?” Still stunned from the thought of being alone, I repeated the name Malinda. “Just like me!” She beamed. It was as if she placed her smile onto my face, and connected us, brought me to safety. That’s why I remember my first doll’s name, because of kindness.

The scrubs in the French hospital were flowered pink and blue. The language buzzed around me as I lay on the gurney.  It’s not lost on my that my grasp of this language is not a lot more than I had in St. Cloud. And my comfort level was about the same. They wheeled her in next to me, this elderly woman — who was not much bigger than I was then. She was scared, and cried out a little when the man who had just blocked my arm was doing the same to her. In my best Malinda I turned and sent my smile to her. I saw it travel across the sterile room and land on her lips.  She smiled back. And we both were saved.

I don’t know her name, but I remember her face. I look at my braced hand and feel myself smiling, in my best Malinda. 

It takes so little to give each other the “everything is going to be ok.” I, who have been given so much, hope to pass it on to you. Take my “Malinda,” and pass it on.

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Nestled




It’s very rare.  Maybe only three times in the last 10 years.  We live in one of the sunniest places on the planet.  So when it happens, when the clouds disappear the entire mountain, the Sainte Victoire, it is extremely disorienting. My heart knows it’s there, but my eyes send a wobble to my knees.  

Growing up in Minnesota, the seasons were very clear. It didn’t take long. I’m not sure I completely understood in Kindergarten, but by the time I transitioned from first grade to second, I got it, the seasons would change. They would always be there, one waiting to lift out of the next. I probably worried when I was only five. That was my nature. I would have asked my grandpa in the field. Then ran to my grandma in her kitchen. Then nestled by my mother’s knee for final assurance that summer would come again. And it always did. 

Each day when I make my morning walk, when I see it, the mountain, I know the love will always be there. Strong. Sturdy. No cloud or change of season can take it away. Oh, I still look, not so much out of worry anymore, no, I still feel nestled…but just to feel it a little more, with heart over eyes I see it. Love remains. Ever.

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An amazing wink.

I didn’t even know asparagus grew wild until I moved to France.  The first time Dominique pointed it out, I couldn’t see it. I was looking for the grocery store stalks, wrapped in a bundle. Right there, he said. Nothing. He had to finally bend over and pick it.  That?  I had no idea. Now, each spring, I can’t walk past one. 

It feels like they are growing just for me. No one else on the route picks them. Of all the people I see on the path, I’m the only one with a cupped hand full of green. And it makes me feel special. 

I suppose it was no accident that the man commissioned me to do the painting. I knew it for sure, after I sent a photo of the completed piece for his review. He loved it, but there was just one more thing he asked. Could you paint a little bird on the back of it, just as a special message to my wife?  I smiled from across the sea… could I paint a bird… (If you follow me, you know.). Yes!  Of all the painters growing wild across this earth, he picked me for a reason. Amazing!

I returned the wink of the universe with a little yellow flying wink of my own.  I’ve said it before, even put it on the cover of a book, “I am amazed.  Take a look around, and you will be too.”

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