Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: January 2025


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Good lighting.

Of course the exterior light changes with the landscaping, but as we travel the country, so does the interior lighting. I laugh as I stand in the light of our current bathroom. It hits my hair just at the right angle. My face is illuminated. Make-up will be easily applied. And the first thing I think, in this perfect lighting, with my image about as good as it can get, dismissing all other views along the way, I think, (and I hear it in my mother’s voice), “This must be right.”

Maybe that sounds vain, but to me it sounds delightful. Because isn’t that what she taught me, to see myself in the best of light? Literally and figuratively. Who’s going to believe it if you don’t? 

And it’s not always easy. Of course not. And it probably shouldn’t be. As with all good things, we need to work at it. From moisturizers to attitude, good things have to be applied. 

And if I give that opportunity to myself, maybe I should be able to give it to others. The cranky woman in the check-out line, or behind the wheel, maybe she’s just having a bad day. Maybe she wasn’t given the proper lighting. And maybe the benefit of the doubt will help move the shade. We all need a little assistance in order to shine. I was lucky enough to receive it from my mother. And so I pass it on to you. Step into the light. It’s going to be a good day.

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Nesting

We will never meet the owners of the VRBO we are staying at, but I think I like them, because of the birds. They are throughout the apartment. On plants. On the walls. A feather above the nightstand. Even a book beside, “Better living through birding.” 
Maybe it’s because I, too, love birds. To hear them sing on my walks. To paint them. Again and again to be feathered with a stroke of a brush. To give them a bit of my own song, my own words, knowing that no one can share it with a more widespread and gentle touch as they do. 

Perhaps it’s even, “whatever you did for one of the least of these….”

I am at fault as anyone. As guilty as anyone. I can lose my patience. Become ungentle. And I don’t like it. So I paint them birds to tell you that I know better. That I can do better. And if you can see the love in that, in all those flutters, then, then I think, as I pull my shy and daring head from beneath my wing, I think we will soar.

I open the book beside me. There is a quote on the first page, and reading it, I know that I, we, were meant to be here. It reads — “I believe the best way to begin reconnecting humanity’s heart, mind, and soul to nature is for us to share our individual stories” — J. Drew Lanham, from The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.

I sit at the kitchen table of these birding people. I do like them. I, we, are nesting.

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Essential accessories.

Time is not the same everywhere. For everyone. I see it. As we travel. For some it is a weight. It drags on their legs until the immobility sets up a barrier. “Nothin’ gonna change here.” I hear it. No room for hope or progress. Beliefs grown too rigid to adapt, to learn, to grow, at best snapping, leaving nothing but fear. And I’m not sure why. I suppose that’s the biggest question of all — how do we see it?  

It’s not like I’m immune. I have to work at it. I have to tell myself “it’s the same palette as Paris,” as we drive across the flat and barren plains. And I smile, because it is. And returning to the hotel I watch the video on the most essential accessories for Parisian women. And as I’m watching the mother and daughter on the screen, I keep smiling, because I know somehow my mother is watching with me, and I point out, I already do that, and she’s smiling from heaven saying, “because I taught you, long before you went to Paris,” and we’re both laughing now, because it’s true. 

Is it because I saw the tumbling weeds and saw the Eiffel Tower? Maybe. Quite possibly. Is it because my mother taught me to see beyond circumstance and look for something beautiful. Most certainly.

It was Camille Pissarro who said, “Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.”

I was lucky to be raised by one, an interpreter. Maybe that’s what I’m doing now, each day, trying to take what is given and find the good. Can you hear it? Can you see it? It’s most certainly here. 

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The Cities.

Growing up in Alexandria, Minnesota, we referred to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and all surrounding suburbs as “The Cities.” And in its plurality, it was really just one big exotic place in our minds. The City Center of Minneapolis was no different than the outer lying New Brighton, where my aunt’s family lived.

After high school, when I moved around, “those cities”, it became clear that no one living in Minneapolis called it that. You showed your roots if you did. And to fit in, I not only stopped saying it, but corrected those who did. I’m not proud of that. What difference did it make if you lived in Anoka and said you lived in “The Cities?” Who was I, were we, to take away the magic? 

I’m thinking of it because I heard it last night, the mentioning of New Brighton on HGTV. It made me smile. It made me think of my Aunt Karolynn. I remembered riding the Greyhound bus as a child, (you could do that then) to this magical place. In the summer sun I thought all things were possible in such a place. There were no songs about it, no “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”s…but I felt it, I believed it, as I straddled the seat behind the bus driver, my chubby thighs stuck to my beginnings, my arms reaching out of windows to come.  And I headed to “The Cities,” neither proud nor ashamed, just filled with magic.

I wonder if we could do that now? Can we do that now? Move from place to place without judgement? What if we did? And isn’t it our duty, not only to call the magic by name, but also drive the bus? I want to do that. I am trying to do that. There is no right or wrong when it comes to hope. Call it what you will, and head towards it, daily.

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Never poor.

It was impossible not to hear. They were talking so loudly. How she didn’t want to go too fast with him. How he was pressuring her. But he really likes you. Everybody knew he wasn’t even over her. But he just wants to be friends. But I don’t know what to do though. (And it went round and round, getting louder with each turn, with no regard to their surroundings.)

If you’re thinking you really don’t want to hear any of this, well, that’s exactly what we thought, getting our coffee in the hotel lobby. And these weren’t even weary guests. No, they were working the hotel front desk. (Working…)

These were adults, I use the term loosely, having the same conversations we had in the seventh grade, only louder.

It was around the seventh grade, I suppose, when I first started to think about money. My mother always told me that “We didn’t have a lot of money, but we weren’t poor.” I always smiled, not because I knew exactly what it meant, but I knew what it felt like. I knew to put my shoulders back. Wear clean clothes. Smooth out the wrinkles. Think of how you are presenting yourself to others. Act like it all matters. (I didn’t have to act — it did matter to me. To us.)

I thought of it today, as all the “dirty laundry” floated around the lobby, flapping with no regard. This is what she meant. My mother was so right. We were never poor. Not of spirit. Of hope. Of dignity. Of worth. Of thought.

As I type this, I fear it may sound judgmental. I can’t speak of whether these people had money or not. That’s not the point. Maybe they didn’t have someone urging them to hold their shoulders back. I did. My life is all the more rich. Daily.

I stood tall with my coffee. Smiled that I had such a mother. And walked away from the lobby. Such sweet silence in knowing — we were never poor.

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Mid-masterpiece.

Renoir.

Some will pass it off as unfinished. As I stood in front of the petite Renoir, I can honestly say that it never crossed my mind. I thought she was beautiful. And so relatable. Just as is. Maybe it’s because it’s where we live. Never in the completed canvas. Isn’t it all a work in progress? Aren’t WE all a work in progress? And we have to see the beauty in that. The beauty in the attempt. The beginning. The middle. I understand this furious speed we have to get over, get through… but maybe I, we, have to just “be” sometimes. 

In all the chaos. All the incomplete. Maybe we can just rest our colorful thoughts in our hands and be. Even for a moment, to know that we can live completely, love completely, without complete understanding, to know that we never really finish…

I don’t know what the day holds. And that’s more than ok. I am mid-masterpiece.

I will never finish loving you.

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Apron strings.

I suppose we were all, at some point, tied to her apron strings. And if not tied, we loosely wandered through the flowered fabric that smelled of sugar and dough — this apron draped across the welcoming belly (also filled with sugar and dough) of grandma Elsie.

Both my grandmother and mother did the kitchen dance. My grandma, mostly around us. And it was my mother who pulled me in, doing the steps backwards, so I wouldn’t have to. From farmhouse to apartment, I didn’t have the words for it then, but I suppose it was never about the floor, always about the dance. The steps each of them took, to make our lives better, my life better, I will ever be grateful. The only real way to give thanks, I guess, is to keep dancing, to keep you dancing.

I got the wink from heaven’s kitchen yesterday, when I received the five-star review on the apron. A woman purchased one of my dance aprons from a store in Florida and then went to the website to get more for her friends. Filling the dance floor. And I can’t stop smiling, twirling, because I know the connection doesn’t end, it keeps growing. Sometimes a word at a time, sometimes even an apron string.

Maybe we never know what it will be that is going to connect us — keep us connected. So we have to stay in motion. Continue reaching out. The floor will keep changing. Sometimes pulled right up from underneath us. But we are stronger than that. We keep dancing.

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Chasing poems.

Sometimes you have to save them from the drain. The pillowcase. The pebbles in the road. Because you never know when the words are going to come. In the shower. Just before sleep. Out for a walk. I don’t always get there in time to save them all. There is a famous story of a poet running from the working fields, trying to get back to the house in time to capture the magic. Secure the poem. Knowing that it would find another heart, another pen to go through if she didn’t get there in time.

And so it is with muddy shoes, wordless, I turn to the canvas. And I paint. Magic comes in so many forms, if we are willing to adapt. To change. To grow. Because love is merciful. Even at the times when you are exhausted, running after it from a field so far, it offers options. Turn to the canvas, it says. To the book. To the kitchen. The table. The craft. The persons behind you. Those lost. Running beside you. Also waiting. Because if we expect from it — this art of love — to indeed be merciful, to be there for us, how can we possibly not do the same?

I chase it myself. I know. But for a moment these words are caught in the hope that I will do better. Be better. I, we, must get there in time.

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Des Moines’ Sainte Victoire. 

It wasn’t in any color that I had seen before. The Sainte Victoire mountain hanging at the museum in Iowa was bolding in oranges and reds and yellows — everything but the colors of Provence — and yet, we knew in an instant that it was home. 

That’s the beautiful thing about “home,” it can come in so many disguises. I have seen it in fields. On sidewalks. On sand. And snow. In front of a painting. In the embrace of love. From state to state. Now country to country. 

I used to think one had to search to “find” it.  But it became clear that it was more about seeing it, feeling it, wherever I was. Inside. The heart has the most magnificent filter, if you use it. It can process through any color, any distraction of pain, hurt, confusion, and find its way home. And, oh, how the world, we humans, like to distract — with all of our “look at them,”s or “look at that!”s — when really, all we need to do is look within. 

We stumbled joyfully through this world of an orange provence, and we were happy. All differences can be navigated, when your heart is in the right place.

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In the palette.

There is a color to Paris, I thought like no other. The earthy tone of warmth. Beautiful, not because they had been spared, but just the opposite, because they had come through. A palette of empathy, not asking you to blend, but a knowing and welcoming nod. A grandeur of grace. 

My mother had that. Before we knew of Paris. Before we even dared speak of beauty itself, she taught me of grace. In the earth tones of survival, she found something beautiful. And I took to it like a dream. I carry it with me, her with me, every time we visit.

At my friend’s house last week, I stopped in front of a photo. It was of her parents’ farm. I stood for a minute. Drawn in, not exactly sure why. But then I noticed it. Could it be? So far from the Eiffel Tower? This same earthy palette. I suppose you could chalk it up to the color of old film, an aging photo, but I felt it too, this same feeling. Again, maybe it was because of my grandfather, my mother, or our recent walk through Paris, or maybe there is beauty in all things that survive, that grow, that keep becoming. 

I smile because someone just wrote on my post that my mom is “still teaching us.” I think it’s true. Possible. If, no matter where we are, we keep walking in grace.

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