Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: September 2024


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Just ride.

No one ever asked where you were going. We didn’t even ask ourselves. We weren’t going “to,” we were going “for.”  Going for a bike ride. Because that was the point — the ride — a hair flying, legs spinning, clothes breezing, gravel popping, mouth singing, hand waving, heart racing ride. 

I don’t remember when exactly I had to start reminding myself to do things just for fun. I suppose it was around the same time I began riding my bike to get somewhere. When I began to check my watch. Use all the gears. And lock up my bike at the destination. None of those things are bad. It’s all a part of the growing. But it’s not the all that I need.

Yesterday I went to the studio without a goal. It takes a good deal of effort to make the panels for painting. To measure. To cut the wood. Measure again. Sand it. Glue it. Sand it again. Gesso it. Sand it again. Gesso again. The grown, destination driven, bike locking part of my brain says not to waste it. To have a plan of what to paint. And I have done that, joyfully, for several weeks now. And I’m so very proud of the portraits that I have created. Of people I know. People I love. But there is a certain pressure to get it right when you’re painting real humans. So yesterday, I let myself just ride. The breeze of each stroke was glorious. Time passed without my knowledge or permission, but it wasn’t wasted.  I could see my banana seat bike lying safe in the empty lot, as I used paint and panel, without measure. 

We don’t say it that much anymore — the one thing I always heard on VanDyke road, from my mother, from neighbors on front porches and open screen doors — “Have fun!” they said, waving with hands not just to say hello, but to be a part of the breeze. So I say it to you, today, do something not because you have to, but because you want to. Have a little fun! Forget about the destination, and just ride.

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Lunch for the soul.

There was no logistical reason for her to write my name on the paper sack that held my lunch. I, alone, carried it from our kitchen table to the bus to my locker at school. Still I looked for it every day, along with the small note. It was only ever a few words, like have a good day, or I love you, but truth be told, it filled me much more than the half sandwich enclosed.

Knowing how little it takes to make someone’s day, I wonder why we don’t do it more. I need to do it more. Give compliments. A smile and a wave. Write letters — small notes even. Because it always comes back. I was schooled from the best. 

Yesterday, I wrote two cards. Sealed them with wax, placed the international stamp in the corner, and walked them to the mailbox. This morning, I opened a random sketchbook, looking for inspiration for the blog, and there it was, a note saved from my mother — “To my little feathered friend — Love you forever and for always!” — and my heart is full. 

I hope you can hear them, these songs of hope, songs of joy, truth, and inspiration, these tiny messages of love I send out on wings. They didn’t start with me — They must not end here.


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The real measure.

I suppose we’ve all done it, judged the water’s temperature by the color. Without so much as a toe dipped in, we can be lured by the gentle turquoise blue of a sunlit sea, or just as easily stepped back by the darkened grays of wave rocked waters. Maybe it’s experience, or maybe the heart was and is the only thing capable of forgetting all the grays of lessons learned, and still able to feel the true temperature of our surroundings.

Seeing him draped in the colors that only the south of France can produce — the colors that poets and painters alike have tried to capture — it was easy to see the warmth. Easy to fall in love. But to see these colors still, colors that neither time nor Midwestern winters could dull — this, I suppose is the real measure.

Maybe it’s true for all things, once you see it with your heart. The yellow-green of sun lit trees that I recently painted in two portraits — I can’t unsee it as I walk along the path – it is everywhere. And I smile in the face of all that green, as familiar as the neighbor who walks his beagle twice a day, the two men who only stroll on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or the biker in his NY baseball cap. They are all yellow-green.

And then I return to the true-blue love of the one I married. Only and always, even on the cloudiest of days, in this most open of blues. My eyes grin at the color my hands try to recreate on the canvas. My heart nods, knowing only its connecting beat could produce such a color. Such is the temperature of a welcoming home.

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Reminders of yellow.

She used to write them on little yellow sticky notes and put them by her telephone — favorite lines from the books she was reading.  They would be at the ready for discussion when she called me. Maybe everything in that sentence is dated. Printed books. Wall mounted phones. Notes hand written. My mother. But for me, it feels like five minutes ago. Now.

She is still getting in her red Ford Focus. Driving down the street to the Public Library to return the books — never in the drop box, but to the librarian Bobbi Jo, who is lucky enough to hear the “yellow notes” straight from my mother’s mouth. And she is quick to deacon herself back home on the bench in front of the picture window. And the sunlit words of choice find their way from page to heart to hand to pad to me. And it never ends. 

Each note was a reflection, a reminder I suppose, of who she was. We’re all looking to find ourselves, the best of ourselves, and pass it on. And, oh, she was good at it.

I change the business card holder on my desk frequently. Even with paint on my hands and pants, I need reminding of who I am. Who I want to be. A reminder to keep searching. To keep writing down the clues. Little bits of my heart. And to pass them on. Is it the best of who I am? For today, yes. Maybe tomorrow, even better. Because the calls are still coming into my heart. I hear my mother’s voice. And Bobbi Jo will remind me through Facebook that this library is still open. And maybe we will all get a little better at communicating the best of ourselves.  And possibly, most probably, if we Ivy it right, the yellow of our beating hearts, will reach through all lines, and stick.

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A little Bohemian.

Grandma Elsie didn’t have email, she had homemade kolaches — a type of Czech pastry. The kitchen table was always filled with them. When I asked why, it was the same answer for why the coffee pot was always brewing, and why the back door was left unlocked — “What if someone comes over…” she said. Maybe it was the scent of the fresh baked dough that wafted through that kitchen, and so easily out the back door to the neighboring farmers, (who were all a little Bohemian when it came to desserts), or maybe it was because just like that door, that table, they knew that Elsie would indeed be open, heart even more than kitchen. 

I was listening to a podcast yesterday on Artificial Intelligence. The podcaster asked, “What makes us human?” They all agreed it was our need and our ability to connect. And if that’s true, and I believe it is, then what does it say about our current humanity when the overwhelming urge across the country is to divide? 

I don’t know when the local bakeries opened in town, but it never stopped Grandma Elsie from baking. I suppose it’s the same for me. I keep writing. I keep painting. Because what if someone does come over — I mean what if someone looks at my feed, my page, my books, my paintings, my home, my studio, into my face, into my heart…what will they see? 

I barely know how to spell kolache…I had to look it up. So I painted a sign on the door of my studio, hoping the message would and will still waft to those who need it — hoping it finds its way to the ones wandering, those looking for a safe, and possibly even delicious, place to land — offering a worn kitchen chair to rest upon, and a heart wide open. 

We’re not that different. We need each other. Perhaps we could all be a little more like Elsie, a little more human. 

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No backs.

“Slug bug, no backs!” We shouted it as kids, upon seeing a Volkswagen Beetle, playfully punching the person next to us. And it’s funny, we abided by the rules of this simple game. If the person said “no backs,” well, then that was it. Forward we went.

Maybe that was the romance of it all. The simplicity. The playful trust in what was. I remember hearing over and over through the years, when asking life questions about finding a career, doing what you love, following your dream, or falling in love… , the answer was inevitably, “you’ll just know.”

And I did, for the most part. Sure, I stumbled, faltered, in all of it. But I knew I was an artist. And I got there. True love took a little longer.

I must have walked by, biked by, drove by the VW bug for sale on the side of the road on Hopkins Boulevard. There was a romance to it, I suppose. Maybe it was the artist in me, the hopeful heart waiting, but it always made me smile — slug bug!, I said, and kept on dreaming.

Maybe it isn’t obvious, but perhaps the most romantic painting I have done is of the blue Volkswagen. It is entitled, “Something in my heart told me to wait for you.” When I fell in love and moved to France, it was indeed because “I just knew.” My playful heart said go — and forward I went. Forward we continue. Joyfully, no backs!

Something in my heart told me to wait for you.
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On St. Germain

“There are so many people who imagine that words are nothing. On the contrary, don’t you think, it’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint a thing. There’s the art of line and colours, but there’s the art of words that will last just the same.” Vincent Van Gogh

We were sitting in the car together on St. Germain, deciding on a place to eat. I pointed through the window to Sawatdee — the only Thai restaurant in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It was unusually warm for an autumn day. Did we want spicy? The slight breeze rustled through the fresh Daytons bags in the back seat of my mother’s car. I got a slight and welcome waft of her Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door perfume as she tapped her hand on my shoulder — the way you touch someone when you want to make sure they are listening. “I forgot to tell you,” she said. “What?” “I was talking with mother (my Grandma Elsie) about your show. I told her how many paintings you sold. She told me to tell you that she’s so proud of you.” Her voice cracked as she said.

Now to put it in context, it was not the nature of an old Swedish woman to tell you how she felt. Oh, she would show you, with a belly squeeze, a rootbeer float, but words of actual praise didn’t come naturally or frequently. My mother, who let go of that silence long ago, gave me those words with such joy and such ease — these words that were almost visible as they ran the path from her heart, through her hand, into my very being. So filling, there was nothing for either one of us to do but cry. We swam in a magnificent tableau of tears of tenderness.

If I were to name this “painting,” it would be Saturday on St. Germain. It’s not lost on me, as I now sit here in France, home of the actual Saint Germain — a cradle of intellectual and artistic life. Renowned writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and artists like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway frequented its alleys, making Saint-Germain-des-Prés a significant hub of French culture. How delicious, I thought, that my first equivalent encounter would be in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Did you come from a line of artists? People ask me this often. Not in the conventional way, I suppose. But pictures were painted with heart and words. And I see them. Live in them. I am indeed cradled to this very day.

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Bloom of voice and thunder.

I pillowed my ears between two couch cushions as the thunder cracked and the lightning flashed through my grandma’s living room. “Would the cows be ok?” I asked her. “Safe in the barn,” she said.

“And the car?”
“In the garage.”

“And grandpa?”
“Smoking his pipe in the basement.”

She patiently had an answer for each one on my list. But surely not the flowers, I thought. They couldn’t possibly be ok. I peaked my head through the front entry door. They were closed and slightly bent as the storm raged around them. “Are they dead?” I asked. “No, just waiting. You’ll see in the morning.”

I slept on the sofa that night. Grandpa snored in the next room. Grandma rolled. I waited under covers.

The first light cracked through the door we never used, giving sound to Grandma in the kitchen. I raced through to the side door. Tiptoed lightly, tickling the wet grass and stood in front of the sun-lit front stairs flanked by flowers. Straight, strong and wide open! I could not only see them, but hear them!

I marked my return to the kitchen with prints of little wet toes. “They’re good, aren’t they?” “Yes!” I agreed.

Oh, the storms I can create in the middle of the night, even still. I go through my lists and cover myself back to sleep. All part of the growth inside. Knowing the storm will end, light will come, and this bloom of voice and thunder, was about to be heard.

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My measure of heart.

It’s only been a couple of days since our microwave died. It also served as the clock in our kitchen. I can’t tell you how often I look at the empty hole for the measure of the day. From the table, the stove, coming in the back door, I look. I “eye roll” my own eyes — how accustomed they were to this time. 

So how could I not think of calling you? How could you not be my first thought when I finish a painting? When I start one for that matter. Wanting to send you my progress along the way. How does my brain not look for your email responding to the morning blog? My outfit. My hopes and dreams. My damaged pinky. Or bruised feelings. Because you were my measure of time. My measure of heart. And this I can’t forget. Won’t. Don’t want to. I suppose it’s only a change of direction. I can no longer look over, but I can look up, look up and know you are still there, Mom. Here. 

Tomorrow they will deliver the new microwave. It will take a minute, but my eyes will adjust to the new normal. It will shine in the corner of our kitchen, and I will think to call you.

Forever connected.
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Maned in peace.

She was at the booth next to me. Both of us offering hope in the best way we knew how. I displayed my words and art. She showed pictures of her horses. It was at a Hazelden Convention. I had never heard of equine therapy before. It was a world and weekend of firsts for me. She told me how horses are honest, and respond without pretense. They can sense emotions and mirror them back to us, offering clarity and awareness. Not having struggled with addiction, I rather felt like one of those horses, as they asked me, “How do you know exactly what we’re feeling?” when reading my poems and books. To be honest, I didn’t know I knew. But what was clear was, that in this world, we have a lot more similarities than differences, if we only take the time to listen.

My husband’s mother liked a break from her last residence, probably even more than we did. Inside, she asked if this was France. Outside, she knew for sure that it was. Lavender fields. The Sainte Victoire. Vineyards. Unmistakeable. We drove down a random gravel road. Walked when the path narrowed. I didn’t see it until I took the photograph. I didn’t feel it until I painted the image. The empathy. Was the horse reflecting her thoughts? Or mine? Dominique’s? I suppose we all knew that this would not be the final place. But it was a good place. And it wasn’t fear. And it wasn’t longing. We stood silent. Maned in peace. It was all ok. Everything was going to be ok.

How do I know? I sit in front of her portrait, and listen.