Jodi Hills

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

Monthly Archives: April 2025


by Leave a comment

A whole lot of wonder!

It didn’t occur to me until I saw the Easter candy going down the conveyer belt, that the “bunny” had now infiltrated the French story. And if not the story, at least the basket. That was not the case when I arrived many years ago. I still don’t know if I have it exactly right, but the delivery system had to do with bells, and not bunnies. And the candy reflected said bells along with chickens and bears and eggs. I laughed inside at first, how ridiculous, a bell delivering candy, when so obviously it’s a bunny…on it’s hind legs…well, ok… I had to agree that both stories needed a little blind faith, and a whole lot of wonder. And I suppose that’s the key to everything.

Through the years I have inserted my own narrative into the French culture. Decorating eggs at Easter. Bringing turkey, the whole holiday I guess, of Thanksgiving. Pictures and portraits and stories. So many stories of my grandparents. My mother. I guess I just want everyone to love them as much as I do. I want you to love them. Because I think if you love them, you will also think of them, and you will miss them, and I won’t have to carry that alone. Their beautiful lives and loves will be so light, so easily carried on the wings of a bell, or the hop of a bunny. Maybe that’s silly, but don’t we have to be? Isn’t it silly to believe that love can change everything? That it can lift us? Renew us? Give us new life year after year? Help us rise up, yearly, daily, minute by minute? 

There is a weight to the world right now that is in dire need of that silly. We all could use a little faith and a whole lot of wonder. No matter how you deliver it today, may your love be light, may your joy travel far. Happy Easter. Joyeuses Pâques!

Shop Now!


by 1 Comment

Ivy-ing as best I can.

I began mothering a set of lifelike plastic dolls from Ben Franklin at around the same time Florence Henderson familied her six on Friday night’s Brady Bunch. It was clear to me, as I lined up each baby in front of the tv set, smelled their heads, tucked in their blankets, that the only thing I was missing was a polyester pants suit like Mrs. Brady. Thus began my first lesson in patience.

I hope I asked, but most likely I demanded a trip to Herberger’s basement. “I’m not sure they make them for little girls,” my mom said. I swept my arm across my plastic family to say that surely I was no longer a little girl. “Maybe Agnes could sew something for you,” she replied. Agnes was a seamstress — and by that I mean she was my grandma’s friend who sewed things periodically in her kitchen/workstation, for women who couldn’t afford luxury, but still had a taste for it.

My enthusiasm was quickly quelled by our first visit to Woolworth’s in search of a pattern. My arms hung at my side. My head tilted back. Tongue out, grasping for air. Grasping for a choice to be made among the Butterick. She only had to give me a look. It was enough to say, “You wanted this. Straighten up.” So I did, but not without a few impatient floor kicks of my bumper tennis shoes.

I had no real sense of time. I could only mark it, episode by episode. The series of painstaking events made me wonder if I would even have a pants suit by the end of the Brady Bunch season. We moved from pattern to bolt. Bolt after bolt. Searching for fabric. Then I got measured. And measured again. Each trip out to Agnes’s farm seemed to take up another week. But then the day magically arrived. In front of the kitchen-stained mirror that leaned up against the wall, she smoothed out the navy fabric across my chubby waist, and I was more Carol Brady than Florence Henderson had ever been.

I don’t know what it cost. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mirror as my mother pulled out the dollar bills from her purse. Surely it was more than we had, but what I was taught, what my mother always showed me, was that it was not more than I was worth. What a gift. She’s still giving it to me.

I think of now, and it had never been Florence. On the days I need a little lift, I still play fashion show. And standing in front of the mirror, I smooth out the fabric on my waist, standing tall, straight, hoping, praying, not to outdo, but by some chance come close to Ivy-ing as best I can.

Portrait of mother.
Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Inside.

Before I could read a calendar, I knew the season of the year by the color of my Grandmother’s purse. The glorious shine of the white leather sack told us all it was spring. When unzipped I knew if I removed most of the essentials, that I could fit my whole head inside. I only knew this because with her attention focused on the stove, I sat on her bed and did just that. I can’t explain the need to get inside everything, I suppose I thought the love was there. So I clomped around in her Thom McAn shoes. Tied her apron around my head so it wouldn’t hit the floor. And I felt a part of it all. A part of her. But it was in the spring of my fifth year, the reveal of the white purse was accompanied by white gloves. Never had I wanted to be inside something more. I saw her slip one glove through the handles, bracing the weighted sack against her church dress, while coddling with the other white gloved hand. I envied the purse. The gloves. (In the most loving of ways.) I sat between her and my mother at Calvary Lutheran. I’m sure others were there, but how could I notice anything beyond those gloves? At one point in the service, (I can’t be sure when because I felt a little faint with excitement), she slipped out her hands and laid the gloves on her knee. I could barely breathe. I looked up at my mother for permission. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say why not. I picked them off of her lap as gently as if not to wake a baby, and slowly slipped my hands inside. I had no idea what was happening. It all felt so wonderful. Had I just become a woman? I folded my hands. I clutched them to my imaginary pearls. I held my face within the pure whiteness of all that love. And I was saved.

I never imagined for that moment to be outdone. But in my sixth season of the white purse, my sixth spring, my mother came down the Sunday morning hallway, singing her own words to the easter song, “Here comes Peter Cotton Fuzz, best little bunny there ever was…” and she hand me the basket. I assume it had chocolate eggs and jelly beans… but how could I be sure, because I couldn’t look away from the white gloves draped over the handle. I crawled inside of all that love. And I have never left.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Begin.

We didn’t have computers when we were young, but we did have “influencers.” Our dining room tables served as our home screens, and we uncomfortably and sometimes reluctantly sat around the table we never used for meals, and oohed and aaahed at the Tupperware or the candles, the home decor that everyone had, and the baskets that no one could afford. The host, (we didn’t have the trendy word for it then) told us how our lives would be so much better if we only had this container that she burped to everyone’s approval, the candle she lit as if it were a sacrifice of all things ordinary, and filled the woven baskets with things we couldn’t afford, or perhaps didn’t even want. 

I didn’t have to look up from my mother’s knee to see her eyes rolling. I could feel them wander. Feel her chest rise and fall, keeping time with the second hand on the clock. Watch her pretend to read the order form and slip it under the placemat. It’s so easy now to swipe the screen, but it was almost impossible to do the same with neighbors or sisters-in-law. Yet she, we, made our own way.

I’m not sure what it was that made my mom want something different. Made her repeal against the influence. To not follow the trend, but create a style. Be it home or fashion, the thought of someone sporting the same look as her was repulsive. And oh, I loved her for it. Now, you might say, well, she was just “influencing you”… but I say no, I was inspired. Inspired to create my own self. My own style. What’s the difference you may ask? I think to be influenced is an ending, but to be inspired, oh to be inspired, this is to begin! What a gift this is! To not be trapped at the unused table but be set free through the swinging back door! 

So I won’t tell you what to do. I’ll only fling open the door. Open all the windows. The rest is up to you! Enjoy!

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Knee deep enthusiasm.

For my thirteenth birthday my mother gifted me a set of starter golf clubs purchased from the Sears catalog. No one in our family golfed, that I knew of…but that never stopped me before. Neither had they painted a picture, nor written a poem, so the ship that housed the fear of the unknown had already sailed, and I made my way to the golf course. 

She could afford the junior summer membership at Arrowwood. Not a second of which could be wasted, she picked me up on her 30 minute lunch break and drove me to the course, slowing down the light blue Chevy Malibu station wagon just long enough for me to drag the emerald green cotton golf bag from the rear, loaded with six catalog clubs. 

I knocked my way solo from tee to woods to pond to green. Smiling with each stroke under the summer sun. On the weekends, if she wasn’t too tired, or mostly I suppose, even if she was, she walked the nine holes with me. And even when my ball ended with a splash or a ricochet, she marveled and said, “I can’t believe you hit it that far!” And she was the first in pond or forest to retrieve my short supply of balls. 

I think of it, her, as I struggle with my morning French lesson. If today were a golf course, I would be momentarily demoralized by my working class swing, that is, until I see her, and I do see her, her knee deep enthusiasm from the pond, hand raised overhead with ball, yelling, “I’ve got this! You’ve got this!” What can I do but keep trying! I, we, in everything we do, owe it to those who came before us, who walked beside us — we have to keep trying!  

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Beyond the groan.

Barefoot and bare legged, as a young girl in summer’s Midwest, I can only imagine it was the closest thing we had to being shirtless. We didn’t give it a lot of thought then. Our roles were silently firm, and burning pink the outline of a tank top on our core was about as far as we went. But I don’t recall ever feeling trapped. No, it was perhaps as free as I’ve ever been. It all felt like a release. From school. From buses. Alarm clocks and timed lunches. Pony tails let loose in bicycle winds. Striped gym uniforms forgotten in lockers, replaced with mismatched shorts and our cleanest dirty shirts. Even daylight said take your time, wander. And we did. I did. Until we got the call.

It was all around the same time. Varied by a parent’s return from work. A dinner that stoved a little too long. A delayed brother or sister, feeling out their teens. A mother who just needed an extra minute for herself, at the edge of her bed, without heels or pantyhose. But eventually from each porch or front door came the call to come inside. You knew whose house was beckoning by the groans emitted. 

We all knew the sound of our call from home. We didn’t talk about it, but I know I wasn’t alone. I know I wasn’t the only one who was giving thanks behind the groan, that there was a light waiting for me. A cream for my pink shoulders. A table for my day’s story. A pillow to carry me to tomorrow’s. 

We toss around the word freedom, as if we didn’t have it. We’ve always had it. Blessed to run between the comfort of constraint and the flight of feral. Our shirtless souls free to wander, and be welcomed once again.

The days are getting longer. (Another click of gratitude.) What will we do with the time, but dare the sun, and stretch the wander… and giggle beyond the groan.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

But the choir.

We weren’t supposed to eavesdrop. And I could understand for the phone, the party line. No one wanted to hear the wringing of our sweaty hands around the mouthpiece, or our muffled giggles. But sometimes, we were just there, in the thick of the conversation. Running in through the screen door, jumping straight into the debate over the current episode of Days of Our Lives. Hearing words like affair and betrayal. Not knowing the meaning, nor the context, desperate to work them into the next conversation with cousins. My grandma, giving me, us, the “zip your lip” signal from across the kitchen. 

So I knew the routine. But sometimes, my curiosity got the best of me, and I risked it. Surely something about church couldn’t be so bad. “What did she mean about the choir?” Now I knew my grandma, she went to church, but she wasn’t the minister. So why did the neighbor lady, sipping egg coffee from her stained cup, say it to my grandma? “Say what?” Grandma asked. “She said you were preaching to the choir?” “Oh, that’s just an expression,” she replied. “But what does it mean?” “It means ‘you’re telling me something I already know.’ You know, like the choir is always there hearing the message…and maybe the ones who need to hear it the most aren’t there.” “So why do we do it? Why do you do it?” I asked. She wiped her hands on her apron, picked up her ever present cup of coffee, brought it close to her lips, grasped it with the other hand — like it was the thought itself she was holding — lowered the cup a little and smiled, “because the choir keeps singing.” I smiled in return. I knew I had heard something special, with no constraint of the zip it sign. I ran out into the summer song. From what I could hear, all was well, would be well, on Reuben and Elsie’s farm.

Each song has wings.
Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Taking space.

We had a lesson early on in our college art class — drawing the negative space. It took a minute to get going. It was hard not to focus on simply the subject. But once in the habit, viewing the space all around, I could see how it not only shaped the subject, but was actually a subject in and of itself, and not just a void.

This is one of the lessons that I continue to learn. Or rather try. I keep trying to learn. And not surprisingly in the studio, but mostly in the mirror. The subject is often a feeling. And, OH, what strong subjects those feelings can be! Real show stoppers!!! When I can take a moment, a breath, a real look at it, I can see it. All that is surrounding me. Bending me this way and that way. Altering. Pushing even. It is then I have a decision to make. (We have a decision to make.) Do we let our surroundings envelop us, all this negative space — (and wow, isn’t that obvious) — or do we take up the space? Filling it with all that we know of ourselves. Of each other. The things we know for sure. The difference between right and wrong. 

I was reminded yesterday, working on my new piece. He has a smile, a smirk even, and it’s hard to get it right. I make the smallest adjustments. And when it comes to life, when he comes to life, it is because I find it from within him. You can maybe force a laugh, but a smirk, that’s all from inside. 

It’s where I find peace. In the studio. It’s my space. But it’s more than that. It’s how I take up that space. Within all this becoming, I can quiet the din of destruction in the news, in the world, and just be. As much as it tries to press against me, us, I hold strong. We hold strong. Taking up the space, with kindness. With love. With truth. With basic human goodness. 

We must hold strong.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

The grassy field.

I’m not sure we could have less in common. Our lives went in completely different directions. Literally and figuratively. Our mothers being sisters, even the name that first connected us has been changed multiple times. So what is it that connects us, keeps us cousining? I can only imagine that it all comes down to the planting of trees.

I worked at a fevered pace to finish the painting of my grandfather, so that my mother could gift it to my brother on the last of his birthdays that she would be here to celebrate. I sent her daily updates. And we were connected by the tears of tenderness that flowed between us. As his image came to life between the steady and the growth, between the rock and the trees, (where all life hovers in the grassy field) we were one. 

I finished in time. I suppose everything does. 

The first time my cousin saw the picture he said, “I remember the planting of those trees.” Of course, that must be it. Even though we grew so very far apart, we were planted. Together. We began with the steady of our grandfather, and the growth that we were all allowed. And that means something. Still. Ever. 

I remember my cousins birthday each year. Being the first of April, it’s not that hard. And when I do, I find myself wandering the grassy field in between, and I am home, ever beginning.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Expecting the unexpected.

Of course I read it in high school.  Possibly again in college. The words haven’t been altered these many years, in this book, Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck. But visiting Monterey this year, the connection of his words to page to book to heart to the very roads we were traveling, this connection was so strong, I had to once again purchase the book.

Its subtitle, was perhaps the most alluring — In Search of America. Never, for me, has this been more important. On the back cover it reads, “he reflects on the American character, on racial hostility, a particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and on the unexpected kindness of strangers that is also a very real part of our national identity.” I pause here. I hold the book tightly. And question. Is it? That kindness? I have experienced it for such a great majority of my life. I have found joy, and pride in it. I hope and pray that I have given it. Freely. That I give it. Still. Can we keep it alive?

I write daily of the lives that have enriched mine. That have held me up. Coddled me. Lifted me. Strengthened me. Brought me so much love and joy. That asked the same of me. And it occurs to me, when I see your comments, when I see you write my grandma’s name with such ease, such familiarity, my mother’s name, my grandpa’s, my teachers’ and friends’…. With each Elsie repeat, she lives on a little longer a little stronger, and I believe in that identity, our identity.

Years ago Facebook did a study. Feeding one group with negative thoughts, another with positive. The increase of negativity in those that received the negative feeds was profound. Now, did we need a study for this? Probably not. But it is important to make a daily decision of what we are putting out there. And it is a decision. 

What is our character? What is our identity? Maybe the quest never ends. From the northernmost tip of Maine to California’s Monterey Peninsula, as a nation, we drive, we pullover, we continue to ask for that “unexpected kindness,” and pray with each roll of the tire, that we are willing to give the same. 

Shop Now!