Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: May 2024


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From the front.

It was only the handle that stuck out of the back pocket of our jeans, but it was enough, this plastic curve of the comb, to tell everyone who we were. Enough to tell everyone we had seen the movies, read the magazines, understood about the proper hair style (for both boys and girls). 

My mom bought it for me at Peterson’s Drug. The light blue plastic was easily seen, but not too showy. The widely spaced teeth of the comb feathered my bangs perfectly, and inserted me smack dab in the middle of the hope that “I belong here too.” 

The level of things that would have connected us more deeply were reserved for secret poems written while lying beside the stereo — poems that only my mother and Casey Kasem understood and were privy to. 

It would take years for me to gain my voice. Find the courage to use it. It’s joyfully ironic, when I stopped thinking about belonging and concentrated more on becoming, only then did I gain both. I did belong. To myself and to this world. The heart that I wear on my sleeve is decisively more connective than any comb I wore in my back pocket.

We’re given the tools we need right from the start. It takes a lot of growing, a lot of courage to use them. But it is what connects us. This sharing. It’s so delightful when I offer up an experience, and then you share yours.  More delightful even than running together wildly down the halls of Jefferson Senior High! Today I see you! From the front! 

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Driving to the airport.

Maybe our sense of chance is diluted by the daily barrage of “last chance” emails. For the fourth day in a row I have received my “really, this is your final chance” to take advantage of this sale.

But I suppose I can’t really blame the internet. Maybe we’re just not designed to see it. Prepare for it. All of these final chances. These last times. The poets and singers have even tried to warn us — “Live like you were dying”; or “Live today like it was your last day on earth.” I get it, but I can’t say I really adhere to this way of thinking. There seems to be a lot of pressure within, or perhaps even desperation. I heard something recently that I like much better. It is from the author of Between two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad. Living with cancer, she was, and is, seriously confronted with this every day. But she explains, rather than living like this day is her last, she decides to live like it’s her first. Seeing the wonder and beauty of everything around her. This is how I want to live.

I thought I already loved him. But he was a country away. Meeting him in real life for the first time I was nervous and excited. My hands gripped the wheel, unsure of how to keep the car and my heart on 494. I slipped my foot from my shoe. I needed to feel the pedal. The energy seemed to be racing from my toes, changing to butterflies in my belly, to songbirds in my heart, and tingling straight out of my updooed hair. I was alive. Alive in every first of my being. I circled the airport once, not seeing him. Our phones, foreign to each other, couldn’t communicate. I circled the airport again. Pulling up slowly this time. There he was. Just like his picture. Sitting on the sidewalk. All of my first were real. Especially love.

Time has a way of covering the path in laurels…go ahead and rest, it says. I’m as guilty as the next person. But I don’t like it. And when I hear the shuffle of my feet in said laurels…when I get annoyed by the little things…it takes me a minute, sometimes longer, but then I hear the voice, “You better drive yourself to the airport…” And I smile. I make the first breakfast with the first toast from the new loaf covered in the new jam. Have the first coffee under this first sun with my first love and the day begins. I begin. I am alive!

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Off the bathroom floor.

Summer’s heat was still trapped inside the junior high gym when we began volleyball practice, just before the beginning of the school year. That, combined with three months of no training and unsupervised candy runs, was enough to turn my stomach. I could feel the rumbling at my feet, moving past my belly, up through my chest. I scanned for my escape route as the red line of my body’s thermometer was reaching my throat. I raced up the stairs. Across the catwalk. Through the wooden doors. Slid across the freshly polished terrazzo floors into the “girl’s room,” and let go of the rainbow of summer treats.

“No!” I screamed into the floor as I heard the wooden door creak open slowly. Because even in this fragile state, I knew who it was. I could see his gray shorts and gray shoes through the gap. Mr. Zappe, our coach. “Are you OK?” he asked. “I’m fine,” I said with an undertone of please, for the love of all that’s holy, close the door. “You know there’s a bug going around,” he continued. “I’m fine,” I said, still horrified that he could see me in this wretched condition.

I’m not proud to admit it, but we all thought he was so weird. When I think about it now, it was only our junior high minds that mistrusted his over-exuberant enthusiasm. But lying on the bathroom floor, I was in no mood for one of his get-up-and-go pep talks. “You know Connie had a touch of it…” Oh, my gosh, he was going to humanize himself by bringing his wife into the conversation. To think of our teachers and coaches as human beings, well, it was just gross. He kept talking. His large glasses were perched between the door opening. I knew the only way to make him stop was to return to the gym floor. I washed my face amidst the sea of his “atta, girl”s and returned two pounds lighter to the gym.

Care doesn’t always come wrapped in the package we think it should. We can be supported in a million different ways. Even loved. I think I’m getting better at the recognition. I hope so. I hope we all can.

I heard myself give someone an “atta girl,” the other day. I laughed aloud — I am so weird! Zappe-weird!

Our world, our days, are going to be filled with many a bathroom floor. The grace, I suppose, comes in how we get up, and how we treat those who try to lift us. Thank you, Mr. Zappe. I’m still in the game!

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Above all the noise.

Somehow I knew from the age of five that I could share it with her — the magic. 

I began with the coloring books.  We bought them at Olson’s Supermarket. My friends all had them. But I understood quickly that not only did I not want to “stay within the lines,” I didn’t even want to stay within the book. So my mother bought tablets for me. Lined for the poems that sprung from my heart. Unlined for the images that jumped through my hands. 

I was afraid to show my friends. I had heard the whispers degrading the scribblers. But I knew it was safe with my mom. That I was. So I held each creation in presentation mode — balanced on two extended hands — exiting the security of my bedroom into the full reveal. It was as if the magic knew. It held strong, grew even, as she held my paper up above the dance. 

The world is filled with those ready to trample on a dream, be it with whispers or boots. So seek out the magic keepers. And when you can’t find one, be one. Carry your precious cargo. Lift it high. Above all the noise. Listen for the magical music. And dance. 

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Given wings.

When I sent her a photo of me standing on the London Bridge, her first comment was, “Where did you get that jean jacket? The collar pops up so nicely!” London Bridge wasn’t “falling down,” but it didn’t sit high in my mother’s priorities. 

 Just as Wonder Woman gained the ability to fly using the power of her Lasso of Truth, my mother did the same with the pop of her collar. I saw the magic happen daily. As she finished getting ready for work, I began to get ready for school.  Crossing mirrored paths, the last thing I saw her do was pop her collar. She went from an unsure 5’7″ to a confident 5’9″ and out the door she went. Crossing Jefferson Street, her feet never touched the ground.

It’s no surprise that as I flew into my own truth, I did the same. I DO the same. (When the golden lasso is passed on to you, it would be a shame not to use it.) Popping from state to state, country to country, I stand a little taller, not because my mother gave me a map, but because she gave me wings. 

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The summer I didn’t go to California.

Entering the second grade they began the year with an assignment — What did you do on your summer vacation? Now, to be honest, I wasn’t ashamed of my summer schedule. I loved it. I would get up early. Fill the the styrofoam covered thermos — the one that my brother made in shop class and discarded in the basement — with ice water, and off I ran into the sun. I ran even faster than the hand painted stripes on the school made thermos. Some laughed when I continued the report. Of how I ran through Hugo’s wheat field. Rode my banana seat bike through the cemetery. Climbed Big Ole’s foot. Spent my weekly quarter for vacuuming and cleaning the house mirrors on a frozen Milky Way bar from Rexall Drug. Softball games. The endless swim of Lake Latoka. I heard one girl whisper loudly behind a cupped hand to her neighbor, all the while keeping eye contact with me as I returned to my desk, “She didn’t even go on vacation.”

I held my smiling face through perched elbows as she spoke about her trip to California. It sounded nice, I thought, but what I was thinking of was how after 4pm, when my mom came home from work, she would vacation out of her pretty summer work dress into shorts and a t-shirt and we would get on our bikes. It was gravel on Van Dyke Road, but traffic was non existent and you could ride down the center of the road. We stretched out our arms and rode hand in hand as the dust kicked up behind us.

I’m still smiling. I’ve been to California and beyond. Well beyond. But my heart vacations daily, floating just above the gravel.

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Your courage. Your coat. Your heart.

I left my winter coat in Minnesota. It’s tucked into the back of my friend’s closet. I used to leave it with my mom. I don’t really need it in France, but that wasn’t the only reason. It was more of a promise that I would come back.  And even more, that part of me was still there. 

It’s silly, I suppose, it’s just a thing. But it is a symbol of something much bigger. Because isn’t that what love is? This giving of a part of you. This leaving a bit of yourself with another. Trusting it is in good hands. In good heart. 

I had a conversation yesterday with a new friend. We spoke of vulnerability, why people are so afraid to share anything, even a simple comment. She said that some of her friends worry that it isn’t safe. If you’re looking for guarantees, here’s one for you — straight from Ernest Hemingway — “If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”  That is about as certain as you can get. But knowing it, you no longer have to worry about it. So go ahead and love. Leave it all behind. Your courage. Your coat. Your heart. In every place that you visit. In everything you touch. In everyone you touch. 

I find great pleasure in the fact that on any given day, if she needed to, she could wrap herself in my coat, in my friendship, in a bit of my heart. 

Maybe it’s a chance I take, daily, this sharing. This reaching out. Wanting to connect. To be a part of something bigger than myself. I know this for sure — my closet is full, and my heart keeps making space.  


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Forever three.

In the arts of love and endurance, gratitude, forgiveness, strength and pure joy, the heart is mighty, for sure! But it’s never been all that good at math.

Of the nine children my grandparents had, only two remain. This two of Rueben and Elsie changed its numbers so many times, and continues still. Only once, with the twins, did it jump by two. The eleven held, and grew even more rapidly, as the nine paired off and tested all of our addition skills. Children turned into grands and then greats, and just as we got used to all of the plus signs, the painful subtractions began. 

But the arithmetic of the heart is nothing like we learned at Washington Elementary. Here they taught us that the value changed when subtracting. But they didn’t warn us about the heart. Because for the heart, it never does. The numbers will forever change — it’s a guarantee that life will do that — but the value remains. Love cannot, will not, do the math.

I mention it today because my dear friends lost their beloved dog. She said she was missing her family of three. I, we, struggle to add comfort in times of loss. I don’t know if it helps, I hope it helps, it often does for me…this letting go of the math. Letting the heart decide what remains. True love does. So, I tell her, you ARE still three. Forever three. 


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Cross-legged on the gymnasium floor.

I don’t know the origin of the question, but it seems we humans have a big need to get to the answer, right from the start. 

He couldn’t have been more than five or six. I was reading to an elementary school in Minneapolis, class by class, starting from the sixth grade to kindergarten. Without exception, even down to this youngest boy, before I began to read from my book, someone asked, “What’s it about?” In true teacher form, the only person seated in a chair would reply, “Just listen…”

Of course I have been guilty as well, in response to: “I just started a new book…” or “I watched a documentary…” Needing to get to the answer. And so often for the bigger questions. What is the suffering about? Why did this happen? 

Some will tell you that everything happens for a reason. But I think there may be danger in even this…all that is, is just a longer version of “What’s it all about?”

There is a pattern, I think, when I’m in a struggle, looping through the question, “Why are they like this?”; “Why do I have to?” “How come?” …and for me, it never feels good, this spiraling… Experts of all kinds will tell you what to do. I’m not an expert. I am just another child sitting cross-legged on the gym floor, looking up for the answers, but instead I’m given the song of the birds. They call me with the starting of this new day, telling me to unfold my legs, get up, open your heart…and just listen. 

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C’est la fête de ma mère

I didn’t understand it, even then. Older teenagers on the bus, they used to have a response when asked a simple question — “Well, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.” My brain scrunched up behind my furrowed brow. But isn’t that actually the only time you would need to tell me, I thought. 

This being said, it’s ironic that so many years later, there’s still a little part of my brain that can slip into that very behavior. I know I’m not alone, expecting that everyone would know my every feeling at every moment. It’s embarrassing to even type it. It’s a lesson to keep learning — this sharing of feelings, even when you think they should be so obvious.

They don’t know it’s Mother’s Day. In their defense, it isn’t, not yet here in France, not until the 26th. But my American heart, missing my American mother, knows that it is. It celebrates and hurts at the same time. So I tell you now — It’s my mother’s day! — C’est la fête de ma mère! And doesn’t she deserve two – at least!

Traces of salt slip into my smile. She would have never let me get away with saying something so silly as “If you don’t know…” — not then, and certainly not now. So today I will wear my heart on one sleeve and my mother’s on the other — proudly! You can join me — and once again in two week’s time. (Most likely, even tomorrow.) Happy Mother’s Day!