Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: February 2025


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Closer.

We went to see the new David Hockney exhibit in Palm Springs. In his late eighties he has created all new works, using mostly his iPad. He is also exploring something he calls reverse perspective.

I could spend a lot of time talking about the vibrant colors. The scale. But it is the perspective that interests me the most. (Or the least, perhaps).

I was in my first year of college, in my first formal art class. The professor gave us an assignment on perspective. I went home for the weekend to see my mother. I sat at the end of her small apartment hallway. I drew what I saw. 

Maybe it was because my world was just opening. A new city. A new life with books and people and wonder. Everything was changing. As I feared, as I wanted. I held up my small drawing. The boy in the back shouted, “It’s completely backwards.” Others shook their heads. Agreed. One even laughed. I was a bit shocked. It hadn’t even occurred to me. I held my breath. The teacher shushed the class. She asked me simply, quietly, in a way that sounded curious, not accusatory, “Why did you draw it that way?” I whispered, “That’s what I saw.” She smiled, and hung it on the wall.

David Hockney is quoted as saying, “To hell with the idea of a single vanishing point.” How exciting! Thrilling even! To paint without rules, simply to get closer and closer to the things I care about. I suppose that’s not just the way I want to paint, but the way I want to live. 

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The gathering phase.

I never thought of myself as shy. I think I just wasn’t ready.

She got the first note from my Kindergarten teacher, concerned that I didn’t say much. “She’s so shy,” it read. My mother replied with a “She’s fine.” It happened again in first and second grade. Maybe third. My mother, knowing me, said “When she has something to say she’ll say it. I smiled in nonverbal agreement. Her belief was mine, and since the fifth grade at Washington Elementary my heart (which is really our only voice) has always been at the ready. I sing it loud through words and art and voice.

I don’t know how my mother knew about the gathering phase. Maybe it’s because she would have loved the same opportunity. I’m grateful that she offered it to me. She never forced what was growing, greening, becoming, inside of me. She gave it the time it needed — the time I needed — and that has made all the difference.

I think we’re often in such a hurry to get people “healed”, or to whatever we consider “normal.” And that’s mostly all for us. I know the furious speed at which we want to get over. But we all have to go through. In our time and in our way.

My friend was surprised yesterday, at the gallery in Palm Springs, how easily I walked up to the owner to promote myself. I wasn’t afraid. I smiled to the sky. I had the confidence, the voice, I can only imagine, because I had been given the time. 

May we all allow each other our moments in the gathering phase.

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Area code.

As you might expect, I am not driven numerically. Words and images dance around my head and heart, amid a constant flow of emotions, (and they can add up to a lot), but not much that I can put a number on. So when we travel from hotel to hotel, I have my own system of remembering the room numbers. Sometimes we get lucky and it’s as simple as 123, but that’s not often. Yesterday was a delight, as we made our stay in the area code my mother had for 50 years — 320. 

I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget that number. 320-763-5809. I remember it was a big deal when we had to add the 76 when we dialed. As a little girl, it was simply 3-5809. Eventually, as the town grew, we even had to add the 320. It was quite an uproar at first, but I rather liked it — having our own area code. A claim to this connection. And I suppose, that’s all anything is about. Having these connections. 

We are fortunate enough to be staying with good friends in Palm Springs. We have remained connected through these France years by phone. I laugh each time I see her number come up on my iPad — it’s still the area code from Chicago – 773. This is where we first met. Of course I could change it on my screen, but I like seeing it. It places us together, right on the park bench, and no time has passed, and we are sisters, girlfriends, ever connected, under a Chicago sun. There is no number large enough for the value of this kind of connection. 

You can call it girl-math. Or no math at all. I don’t really care. Are they prime numbers? For me, YES! And at this very moment, they are two of the largest sums I know.

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With a bang!

I don’t remember not having a crayon in my hand. At least one in the pocket of my jeans purchased in Herberger’s basement. An unsharpened pencil (because why wouldn’t I use it?). Paints in the nightstand by my bed. Big Chief notebook pads everywhere. Coloring books stacked in the closet. Inside my book bag. Pencil cases from every theme park within Minnesota and Wisconsin. I suppose the scene was set from the start, in this my first act. 

The famous writer Anton Chekhov said, “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”

I may never be famous. Nor rich (in the monetary sense). None of this has ever been the worry. But I fire my “pistol” daily. I write. I paint. I create something. Anything. Because I know what I’ve been given. I’ve always known the value. I have peeled the paper from every Crayola and used it to the end. I have sharpened the #2 until my fingers were at risk of getting caught in the sharpener that hung by each classroom of Washington Elementary. I fill the pages. Each canvas. It is my privilege. My duty. My responsibility. My joy. 

Whatever it is that you’ve been given, use it. Fire the pistol. Play the piano. Weed the garden. Care for the children. Teach. Reach. Run. Use your gifts. There is a reason that they were put there, on your set, in your hands, within your heart. 

I type the words for you this glorious morning. Read them with a bang!

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Day dreams.

“We just save all our good dreaming for the daytime,” she said, as I sat with my mother at the breakfast table, each of us offering up the nightmare from the wee hours before. We’d laugh through the fog of the ones we were still in, eat our breakfast, wash our faces, and begin again. 

Smarter people have tried to figure out why we dream what we do. It’s funny, even when you know they aren’t real, when you know they didn’t happen, the feeling from it can remain for minutes, for hours, some even longer. Oh, feelings… 

So when I have a good one, a good dream at night, well, that is something to be celebrated! And it happened two nights ago. It was only a brief visit to my grandma’s house, walking in with all of my cousins. Grandma Elsie said she had a surprise for us. Past the kitchen, round the corner, into the living room. A sea of Christmas presents. Presents of red and green piled higher than the tree that still tried to blink its way through. Higher than the television that played Rudolph at full volume. Higher than the smell of tobacco from Grandpa’s pipe that lingered in a Christmas color haze on the ceiling. Higher than my heart had ever reached in this farm house of theirs. 

It’s probably too easy to interpret as all the gifts they gave us. But that’s what I’m going to do. 

Still high from the night, we got coffee and went antique shopping in Arizona. My Valentine bought a beautiful necklace for me. Of course I had dressed for the occasion, (the occasion of a new day) — my mother had taught me that too. The woman behind the counter helped me with the clasp and told me I looked like a model. There I was, with the one I love, in mid compliment, high again. It’s true, what my mother said. Even after the best night-dream I’ve had in a very long time, the life I am living is even better. 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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I have to believe.

Grandma Elsie

There were “grab bags” at the counter of the antique store yesterday. Of course Grandma Elsie would have bought one. Or perhaps she had them placed there from heaven, simply to answer my question, “I wonder if Grandma had ever been here?”

I don’t know where she got it from. I never knew her parents. But she had it as long as I knew her, this feeling of possibility. She was, as she often said, “so close to winning!” No mail-in sweepstake went unanswered. No “Crazy Days” was ever missed. Ben Franklin and Woolworth’s always had the grab-bags. She bought one for herself, and one for me, even when I said, “Oh, you don’t have to, Grandma,” (just as I did, when she offered to make me a root-beer float) — but either way, before I knew it, there was a paper sack of dime store leftovers in my hand and a root-beer float melting on the kitchen table. 

I suppose that’s where I get it from — this believing that my next painting will be the best. Hoping my next story will be a grab bag of words that no one can put down. And why, when traveling through the smallest town in Arizona, stopping only for a bathroom break, I am lured to a counter in an antique store lined with grab bags and I believe it is a sign from my Grandma Elsie. Even in this place, so far from anywhere, I am so close to winning!


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Roadrunner.

I spent every Saturday morning in front of the television set (and it was a piece of furniture then). Not too close of course, because we still believed, or were told, that we would go blind. Still in pajamas, I sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor. With each cartoon, I leaned forward. Closer. Nearly bent in half. My belly resting on my legs. My head in my hands. Still remaining in the safety zone, but believing I could will the roadrunner just out of reach from the coyote. And I always did.

All the glorious colors of Saturday morning danced in my head and made their way to my feet as we walked (me almost skipping) the Saguaro National Park. Having the luxury of living beyond the “fashion” of camouflage, I was well aware that actually seeing one of the animals they posted would be a stretch. So far I had only seen a woman in full Lycra step out of the shade of the sign posting “beware of the javelinas.” The timing was perfect. I could feel my mother’s wink from heaven and we both began to laugh. It was near the end of the trail, maybe only 20 feet from the car, when I saw it. My finger pointed as if to shout. I could hear the people behind me say, “She’s pointing out something.” Then the people in front of me, saying the same. A roadrunner I whispered, but pointed more loudly. And when it moved, they saw it. My first thought was not to grab my phone, but give thanks that I had remained five feet away from the television set. I hadn’t gone blind! (Those behind me probably sat too close.) I smiled and took the photo. I could hear the beep-beep (or was it meep-meep) in my head.

Sometimes, I think it’s all going too fast. It feels like time’s coyote is right at my heels. But in the glorious moments when I catch myself between decades, one foot on VanDyke Road and one foot in the desert, or even a country away, I can gather it in, and I slow it down, lean in just a little closer, and give thanks for all that is to be seen.

Let me always see the gift.
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The magical gifts.

It was on the par three seventh hole at the Alexandria Country Club, the vending machine. It took two of the three quarters I earned each week for cleaning the house to buy a Gatorade. There was only one flavor then (or should I say color?) It was hot under the summer sun. And I wasn’t allowed in the clubhouse, like most of the girls I was playing with. I was on a summer “local youth” pass, but that pass ended with the final hole. I carried my green bag of five clubs and sat in the parking lot, waiting for my mother, finishing my Gatorade. For me it was the taste of “I still belong here.” It was the taste of “I still won.”  It was the taste of “my mother is coming soon, and she loves me.” 

Maybe it had that power, or maybe I gave it that power, so on the days when I couldn’t quite get there myself, I let it take me. Carry me. And I am grateful for all of it.

Would I have believed in the magic, if I hadn’t washed the mirrors, wiped them with a newspaper for that no-streak shine, to earn the quarters, to buy the drink, to sit outside the clubhouse? Maybe. I don’t know. But I’m so happy I did it. Because I carry that magic still. From state to state. Country to country. 

Yesterday at the Walgreen’s in Tuscon, after hiking in the National Park, I bought two yellow Gatorades. I still live in the magic. It’s where I belong. 

I, we, barely more than air, hold the most magical gifts.
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Dreamer.

I didn’t ask them who they voted for, where they came from, or if they went to church on this Sunday morning. Because weren’t we all actually in one, a church, as we hiked the trails of the Catalina State Park? Right down to the organ pipes of the Saguaro cactus. 

They wanted me to take a picture of their group, with the mountain and the cactus, and their accomplishment of the hike. We only knew each other because we shared the same dusty earth. And wasn’t that enough? Enough for them to easily hand over their phones to me, a stranger, yet at the end of the same path. We smiled under the same brilliant sun, perhaps all wishing it could always be this way, and we walked with a bit of the prayer still clinging to our shoes.

I played no music on this hike. I listened only to the sounds of my feet in the gravel. It could have been on VanDyke Road, or in Aix en provence. I smiled. The warmth of their phones still clinging to my palms, and the words of John Lennon ringing in my head, “…I am not the only one…”.


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A little bit higher.

I loved Mrs. Erickson, my third grade teacher at Washington Elementary, but it was clear she didn’t have all the answers. I can see, looking back, what she was probably trying to do, but still… She wanted us, as young girls, to get interested in the sciences, so she grouped us together and told us about exciting careers in medicine, geology, chemistry, why “we could even be astronauts”, she cheered. My hand shot up in the air — so eager to speak, I crossed my left arm over my chest, trying to keep my right arm from, well, shooting into space. She pointed her stick at me, letting all the words out of my mouth. “We’ve been playing it for years!” I said. “What’s that?” She asked. “Fashion astronaut. My mom and I play fashion astronaut almost every day!” She tightened her lips and closed her eyes, shaking her head in dismissal. “That’s not a thing,” she said, staring back at the blackboard. 

“Well of course it’s a thing! I know what I’ve done and hadn’t done,” I thought to myself, head hrrrumphing in my hands. My mother had never lied to me. We WERE fashion astronauts. I got ready with her each morning. As she accessorized she explained how this scarf or this necklace would put this certain outfit right over the top! Launching it above all others. We were indeed astronauts! No one could tell me otherwise. 

I took the bus home, rolling the assurance of my scarf between my fingers. I stomped down the gravel driveway and waited for my mom to come home from work. I told her everything — it all came out faster and higher than I hoped, but she had become very efficient at deciphering my “we’ve been wronged” vernacular. She smiled. “That’s the thing about being an astronaut,” she said, “we don’t really need anyone’s approval.” I smiled too. And knowing this, didn’t we just go a little bit higher!

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