Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: July 2024


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The ample susan.

I suppose it’s always hard to see how special things are from deep within. I, like all of my cousins, took for granted that Grandma Elsie’s cookie jar would always be full, and the lazy susan in the bottom corner cupboard needed two hands to turn. (And I’m not talking about a little spinning spice rack, no, a lazy susan that could spin a small three to four year old into a dizzied frenzy.) My grandma stocked this beast of a susan with the entire Sugar family — Sugar Daddies, Sugar Mamas, and Sugar Babies. She also included the Black Cows, Slow Pokes, Junior mints, random candied corns and jelly beans depending on the season. There was not a mint or a lemon drop in sight. So when one of the girls in our jump roping gang at Washington Elementary began speaking disparagingly about her grandmother’s candy selection, I couldn’t believe it. When others chimed in, I dropped the rope to investigate further. No Sugar Babies? Not even a Slow Poke? No. Surely she offered you a rootbeer float from time to time. They laughed. 

It’s amazing what a little knowledge can do. I never twirled a jump rope the same. There was no need to flaunt it. It was my grandpa who taught me that. After arriving first in a race around the farmhouse with one of those sugar-fueled cousins, I ran to him bragging about my victory. He patted my shoulder. “It’s enough to win,” he said. 

Each afternoon recess, I quietly twirled the rope, deep in the knowledge that I was winning. 

From time to time, I can still get lost in the ample susan of my life, not seeing how special it is until life comes tripping with its little interruptions. And I see these breaks in fortune for what for what they really are — just little schoolgirls, telling me, showing me how lucky I truly am. I smile, and twirl in gratitude once again. 

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To keep our pink ladies dancing.

I used to imagine that the front stoop of my grandma’s house was only there for the family of Hollyhock dolls that grew on either side of the cement steps. I was only allowed to pick a few each season. She showed me how to pluck the flower from the stem, flip it upside down and push an unopened bud through the then top to make a head that rested above the pink flowing dress. And for the rest of the afternoon, this small gathering of elegant ladies danced outside the entrance reserved just for them.

I gave them the voices to compliment each other. “How lovely is your pink dress!” “And yours is beautiful!” I danced them together like my mother once did at the Lakeside Ballroom with her cousin Janet. And the music from the transistor radio scratched in and out as I adjusted the antenna in the summer breeze. The lessons of last summer were forgotten. I had no fear of the wilting dresses. I only played. And played, believing that all beauty on Rueben and Elsie’s farm would ever remain.

I wasn’t wrong. Yes, the flowered dresses lay almost flat by the end of the day, but decades and countries away, the beauty remains. Yesterday, in the French countryside, she showed me the one Hollyhock flower that somehow grew between the century old crack of the house entrance. I wasn’t surprised. I had enough French words to tell her of how I made the pink ladies on my grandma’s stoop. We both smiled and touched the rhythm of her little pink dress.

I wrote in a poem, “This year… let’s love like no lessons have already been learned…” Of course we have to grow and educate and evolve. But some “lessons,” like those that deal with lost love, disappointment, unreached expectations — to keep our pink ladies dancing, we have to let those go. The heart stoops must remain clear and ever hopeful.

Countless things grew on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. Again and again. And the beauty will ever remain. I wake to this morning sun, and keep on dreaming.

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The Windbreaker

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Returning home after the first Friday of my first week in the first grade, I vowed I would never go back to Washington Elementary. This was a week full of firsts, and I’m not sure which one put me over the edge — the school lunch lady that made me eat a pickle, the enforced afternoon nap followed by the milk I refused to drink, the pulling of my long blonde hair by my thought to be friend David Holte, or the introduction of time that seemed impossible to follow.

I felt exposed. Unprotected. I waited by the garage doors for my mom to return from work. When I told her that my future plans did not include school, she didn’t dispute it. This was Friday night — we had the whole weekend ahead of us. Two days for a six year old could seem like a lifetime, so I helped her in with the groceries and my new life began.

Saturday morning I jumped into the Chevy Impala, beside my mom, seatbeltless and carefree. We parked outside the Ben Franklin and walked to Herberger’s basement. I ran through the racks like Dynda’s clothesline, while she picked out some new hand towels. She pulled me out from under and said she had an idea. We walked over to the “new for school” items. Windbreakers. I ran my hands along the sleeve. So sleek and shiny. They could repel anything, she told me. Anything? I asked. Any storm to be faced, she said. Like wind? Yes. Water? Yes. David Holte? Of course. Milk? It would run off your sleeve like a raindrop. I smiled. But what about if I get lonesome? This was the best part, she said, and opened the zipper around the neck. The love compartment. Just open it up and pull it around your head. Tie the strings, and I’ll be with you. I put my arms in the navy blue windbreaker. They slid in so easily. They felt cool and fast. I pulled up the white zipper. Tucked my hair in the hood and made a bow, just like I had learned with my bumper tennis shoes. I felt all of the power contained. She handed the clerk some of her hard earned cash. Exchanged for a receipt, the woman asked if I wanted to wear it home. I may never take it off, I thought.

I wore it straight through Sunday evening. I couldn’t wait to show Cindy and Jan. I got up Monday morning, dressed and ready. My lunch was prepared in a brown paper sack, along with a note to my teacher that said I didn’t have to drink the afternoon milk. Fully zipped and tucked in the protective love of navy, I walked to the bus stop. I waved and smiled as my mom drove down the gravel road. The breeze rolled past my waving arms. I knew I could face anything.

I wake this morning, dressed in a love I will never take off.

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WWED.

It was in the first aisle of Jerry’s Jack and Jill that I got a nose bleed. My grandma, hands already full with a sack of toasted marshmallows, told me to reach into her folded sleeve around her right elbow. Sure enough, there was a Kleenex. It wasn’t long before I needed another. “Check the other arm,” she said. I switched to the opposite side of the cart, reached into her folded left sleeve, and pulled out another. In aisle three, even after the bleeding had stopped and the marshmallows were nearly gone, I wanted to see how far this went — if Grandma Elsie was actually some sort of magician. “I think I need another one,” I said. “Check my right bra strap,” she said quite confidently. And just like a rabbit from a hat, I pulled out another Kleenex. 

And it was magic — the ease with which she could fix any situation. How I counted on it! I suppose we all did. But I never saw the weight of it — the things she carried. How lightly she skirted through the aisles. And certainly things had to bother her – she was a woman of this world, and no one escapes, but still she never weighed upon, but lifted up. 

I think about it now. Am I traveling lightly? What is it I’m choosing to carry? The solution, or the burden? I ponder, WWED? (What would Elsie do?) I smile, and I choose the lightness of magic, the lightness of joy, wearing my heart on my sleeve, and sometimes under my bra strap. 

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Out gratitude’s door.

“If wishes were fishes, we’d all be in the brook.” If she said it once, she said it a million times, enough to fill a brook, I suppose. We’d pull at her apron. Wishing we had this certain candy, when the lazy susan of the corner cupboard was full of sugary treats. Wishing we had the newest game, when an endless adventure waited for us in a yard filled with apple trees and cow gazes. We sucked in our cheeks, breathing like fish, filled our pockets with Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babies and swam out into the summer sun.

Not truly knowing what it meant, I think we wished around her, simply to play our own fish game. As she sent us off with this string of words, we would swim for hours in a wheat field. On a gravel road. And this was one of the greatest gifts we received — the gentle shove out gratitude’s door into all that we had!

It still makes me laugh sometimes. I say under my own breath, puffing my frustrated lips, keeping my teeth clenched, “Well, I wish I had… then, I’d be… and the words puff from my angry mouth, and it sounds something like a fish. I shake my head, and realize how silly, stupid really. Then I swim through my list of everything I have, buoyant once again.

It’s so easy to get caught up in what we don’t have, and the crazy thing is, that only takes us away from the wonders that we do. I can still hear her voice as I head out this morning’s door. I am ever thankful.

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The light within.

It’s only two laps in the pool. The time it takes to check the mailbox. Or the final crisping of the crust on the baguettes baking in the oven. Less than the length of my favorite song. Just two minutes. But we begin to lose this precious two minutes of light every day now. 

It’s impossible to hold on to. I try to grab it like a birthday balloon, but the string floats out of reach. This time. This lit time. And it seems frightening at first. No way to capture it. Time is like that. So what’s to be done? My only thought is this — we can still light it. Not with sun, but with attention. With glowing thoughts perhaps. Smiles, yes, that could work. There is a light to joy, isn’t there? Yes, yes. I believe it. So instead of worrying about what is slipping through my hands, I give thanks for what is captured in my heart. And I am lit from within. Minute by glorious minute. With each bite of the fresh bread from the oven, the kitchen shines a little brighter. The reflections dance off the pool that I swim, and the gravel I walk. 

The sun is merely our head start, our best example…the lead which we must take on daily, with hearts and minds that know no time constraints. I wrote once, “nothing is lighter than joy.” I meant weight at the time, but I think it works the same with absolute shine! Either and both, I’m going to carry it with me.

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Gentle and kind.

I suppose I already knew it, but it’s good to be reminded. Margaux began a week of summer school theatre classes. I asked to see the end project. It was just a short film clip to show some emotion. I had never really seen her argue before. She was indeed acting. Thinking about it later, of course they would have been directed to this. Anger is always the easiest. The quickest trip. The path cleared with the worded blade. And unfortunately, that remains so true in our day to day lives. 

Wielding our knives, we so easily remove the protective sheaths of kindness.  The subtle acts of wonder and curiosity, even thinking. I, too, can make the leap far too easily. Aaaaah, patience. I urge it to come walk beside me, even when it has already made the offer, already stood waiting…patiently. I laugh at the irony, me trying to rush patience itself. So I stop. I listen. 

Answers don’t come with the speed of bullet, at the cutting of a blade. Anger is not a path. Will there be acting? Of course. Not pretending, but acting, acting like it all matters. Because it does, doesn’t it? Don’t we? Matter? We’re all listening for this reply. I still have to believe the answer is a resounding yes. A yes that waits for us to join its path. Patiently. 

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Nothing wasted.

There is a hungry woman at my table each morning and it is me.  I don’t know why it seems new. This same wood. These same chairs. Why should I be surprised by this bread? I made it with my own hands. But it IS new. I am new. And it feeds me with the chance, moving from table to tablet, the chance that I will put the words in a different order today, and somehow you will know all that I meant to say. Maybe they will push away the struggle, or broom a path. Tickle a wanting rib. Or maybe simply sit gently beside your expectant heart. 
I know most will scroll by. And that’s ok. Other words are calling. But who would I be if I didn’t try? We have to try. Believing that small difference, is still different. Small kindness is still kind. Small steps are still movement. So I type on. Hope on. And the page is not blank. And this day is not wasted. The lavender honey on this morning’s bread fuels the offered and open blank — telling me that pages weren’t meant to be followed, but written.

“I want to leave as few pages blank as possible.” Virginia Woolf

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The keeper of.

It’s just a small bundle of price tags. I found them in an old bureau. Having nothing to price, I began writing on them the things that are the most valuable to me. Tagging what I’m ever grateful for. My priceless. 

On my best days, I add to the list. Writing with a fever all the good things happening. On my other days, you know the ones, when you’re knee deep in all that otherness, I still have the hand and heart free to give the bundle a little shake, a little shake that reveals my growing everything. A revelation that makes me add to the list — wisdom — short for, “On the days that I can’t create something beautiful, at least let me have the wisdom to see it.”

Since creating my gratitags, one thing has become so clear. I am the author. The keeper of. It’s so easy to think someone else has the power to change your day, ruin your day. I’m as guilty as the next person, this giving it away. But then I see my tiny tags. Still all tied together. I step out of the other, into the everything, and I am gratefully whole. 

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Running the Marys.

Through the month of July, I thought the row of flowers that lined our driveway were a group of Marys that all shared the last name Gold. Brightly dressed in oranges, reds, and yellows, these Marys sweetened our driveway like the Halloween candy I had laid out in rows several months before. 

These Marys seemed so hearty. So forgiving. Not like Mrs. Muzik’s flowers a few houses down, that, while beautiful, didn’t want to be touched. I ran the Marys daily. Racing up the row in the driveway, then back the row in our lawn. If I bent over with one arm reaching low, I could run my hands through all the colors, greeting every Mary, my fingertips as new as each petal. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I felt it in my heart, this promise to be delicate, to be strong.

While she was out watering her lawn bouquet one evening, I told Mrs. Muzik about our Marys. She looked confused at first, then shook her head, “They’re marigolds,” she said. Isn’t that what I said, only faster? I know I said, each one is named Mary Gold. “No,” she said, and said it again — “marigolds.” I walked back up the gravel hill to our house. My mom was standing by the garage door, where our flowers began. “She’s trying to kill my Marys,” I said, bottom lip out. “Who did? What?” “Mrs. Muzik, she says they aren’t Marys at all, they are marigolds.” My mom smiled. “But ours are Marys, right?” “Yes,” she said, “Of course they are.” She locked my hand in hers and we ran down the row.

We were sitting at our local seafood restaurant, Touinou. The outdoor deck was lined in oranges, yellows and reds. A butterfly floated above them. I knew it was my mother. You can’t tell me differently. I was raised never to allow anyone to kill my Marys. We sat together, delicate and strong, in the glow of a French summer sun.

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