Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: angel


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All the difference.

I’d like to think that I’m smart enough to see the choices, the solutions, the options even, that are right in front of me, (I suppose we’d all like to think that), but I must admit I often need a little shove. 

My guardian angel must have perfected her eye roll by now, as I wander past the obvious signs until finally being clunked on the head, thinking, oh look what I discovered. And still, she allows me the victory. 

I was stopped in my tracks yesterday on the all too familiar path. A group of tree trimmers told me I couldn’t pass back this way. I had been thinking for the last week or so that I was getting bored with this route, this form of exercise. But yet I kept walking the same gravel. Feeling a little annoyed, I crossed the river, started walking the route that I hadn’t visited for maybe six months. Half way down the path I saw it. A complete Fit Park — filled with bikes, an elliptical, a rower, weights, stair stepper, everything. I sheepishly smiled. Alright…I get it. 

I went back in the afternoon. So pleased with my discovery.  (I can hear the laughter as I type it — “my” discovery.) 

It’s not lost on me that we studied the poem in junior high. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Went through it word by word. Wrote the paper. Knowing, I would be the one who so easily took the different paths. I wouldn’t be afraid. I would be living the words, 

“I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” 
And for the most part, I can say that I have. I have lived this. But not all by my own doing. I have been led, and pushed and guided and loved through it all. And as I read through the words now, I think maybe it has always been the love. Love that let me wander. Love that sat beside me when I was tired. Love that dared me to continue. Love that offered me to stay. Love that each day, even after stumbling along in rock filled shoes, produces a grateful grin on my sheepish heart. 

The sun is rising. Love is calling. I must go.

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Raison d’être.

I was maybe five or six the first and only time my mom told me to clean my room. I didn’t like it at all. Not for the reasons you may think. It was because I didn’t like being seen in this way. A mess. I suppose I just loved her so much, I wanted her to see the best of me. And she was right. This wasn’t my best. Bed undone. Clothes on the floor. I knew, even then, what this space was for. My room to create. I needed this space to gather all my feelings on paper. And she knew it too. The space to make sense of all the things we were feeling, this would save us. Saves me still. It and I became clear, as she smiled from the doorway.

I didn’t have the words for it then. And certainly not the French words. But I hear them. Daily. “Ma raison d’être.” My reason for being.

This is what I’m making space for. A clear path to feel it all. A way for everything to get in. For everything to get through. Because as hard as it is sometimes, I do want to feel it. All of it. I think that’s why I’m here. My reason for being. To feel it and capture it with words and paint. To unclutter the path so we can all make our way…together.

Sometimes one of you will pick out a few words, a phrase from the daily post, and walk it back to me. This is my mother’s smile from a path made clear, and I know, I’m exactly where, who, I’m supposed to be. I’m smiling too.

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The golden glimpse.

It wasn’t certainty, but the complete absence of the need for it. It was only a moment. Perhaps it will take even longer to explain than it lasted. But it did happen. This morning. I walked out the back door. There was no change in temperature. It felt like the world was one big room. Everything equal. I walked around the yard in my swimsuit. I can only describe the feeling as enough. I felt thin enough. Pretty enough. Clever enough. (Not because I had changed, or gotten better, it was just that everything was connected. There was no better, no worse — we all just were.) I was loved enough. Given enough. Not wanting. Nor waiting. Just being. A part of it all.

And I hope you can hear the joy, the gratitude in the word enough.

I jumped into the pool. Still the same temperature. I swam my laps in the blue that held no separation. Was it sky or water? Swimming or flying? I wasn’t sure. But it was enough. Leaving the pool, the water beaded upon my skin. Under the sun. Slowly drying. I was embraced. Framed. Just as the woman in the painting. Golden.

By the time I reached the house, it had passed.

Only to be felt in glimpses now. But those glimpses, I smile knowing, they too, will be enough. I’ll catch a flash of it, walking past her, hanging on the wall. Or maybe walking on the street. I’ll smile as she randomly strolls by, effortless, this stranger, not known by name, but by frame, both feeling, it is indeed golden — just to be — and we are enough.

I sit now within and between the labored breaths of my mother-in-law. How many more? It’s not certain. But there’s no need for it. Not now. In and out. Pausing. And there it is — the slightest smile between the gasps. A glimpse of just being. And I know it’s enough. It has been so beautifully enough.

She’s somewhere between water and sky now. Her arms, merely twigs, make a flutter. The sun is calling. She, I, we, all caught in the golden glimpse. It is more than enough.

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Unconditional.

“You sneeze just like Grandma Elsie,” my mother often told me. It always made me happy.  Maybe that sounds silly, but it is true. I suppose it’s because it wasn’t something I had to work for. It was a connection I just had. Still do. A gift to this day. A reminder of this unconditional love. I received it from my grandmother. From my mother.

There is a fatigue that comes from wanting people to like you. To love you. And it’s not always a given. Being related is not a guarantee. Some people just don’t. Won’t.  

I don’t recall ever having to try with my grandma. From the days of being plopped in a chair, I can remember just watching her. Fascinated by this ever whirling plump that stopped randomly to poke my belly, or kiss my cheek. (And I was a momma’s girl from day one. The thought of being plopped anywhere other than her lap was terrifying.) But here, in my grandma’s kitchen, seeing the ease with which my mother passed me off to her, I trusted that I would be more than ok. And I was. 

I don’t edit my daily blogs. (Maybe that’s easy to tell.) I don’t plan them in advance. I let the memory come. And simply tell you the story. I hope you can see the love in that. Because I’m not sure that love can be dazzled out of anyone. Nor can trust be forced. When it’s real, it just comes. Naturally. 

Mowing the lawn yesterday, the dust filled the air. Filled my nose. I sneezed again and again above the sound of the motor, beneath the blue of heaven’s smile. 

Love remains. Plopped in the comfort of my heart.

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Nothing shouted.

The first time I visited New England was with my mother. I was just out of college. Up until then all of my “vacation” time had been used to have surgery. To say we both fell in love immediately would not be an exaggeration. The main street was lined with seemingly freshly painted white houses. Porched and welcoming. A street sweeper (by hand) waved us in. Washed windows revealed the contents. Clothes. Beautiful clothes for sale lived in this house. My mother looked at me and beamed. We walked the white stairs and opened the door. Was that the slight hum of angels singing? Or just my mother’s heart. 

It was all like this – this understated elegance. Lobster on paper plates. Lawns mowed. Cars washed. Nothing gilded. Nothing shouted – it wasn’t necessary, it showed. 

I visited again. Several times. I have never harbored a New England address. And though I may have never actually “there,” I have lived in it, here. 

There are so many gorgeous places around the world. I have been lucky enough to visit so many of them. And as the saying goes, “if you’re lucky enough to be here, you’re lucky enough.” 

I have, in the past, been guilty of waiting — waiting to be happy if I was in the right place. I’m learning, daily, to create those places, those feelings, that joy, that comfort, in the exact place that I am. Making the hotel breakfasts. Dressing up to go to the grocery store. Eating slowly. Seeing the day for the first time, because, aren’t we all? Today is really our vacation from yesterday. Our journey towards tomorrow. I’m going to take those photo opportunities along the way.

The electrician was here the other day. He finished his job. I don’t know his name. But I invited him inside. He vacationed for a few brief moments at our kitchen table. A cup of coffee. A plate of cookies. I smiled, hoping, for these few moments, that maybe I was his New England. He asked where I was from. And, as so many people do, asked which place I liked better, the US or France. How could I explain that I was trying to live in the best of places. That I carried a piece of it all within me. That I was a French breakfast in a New England town. A relic of Rome. Dancing to the joyful music in Spain. Dangling my feet in a summer Minnesota lake. Standing in front of my own painted “Mona Lisa.”  My heart jimbled at the thought. I could hear the angels softly sing, my mother now one of them. “I love it all,” I said. And meant it. 

I’m here. And I am home.

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That driveway’s end.

We were best friends in the second and third grade. Too young to know that it’s hard for three. My grandma would warn me of this years later when skating with my two cousins, but it came too late for Jan, Shari and me.

We did everything together — not that our everything consisted of that much, but it felt like more than enough to equate to BFFs!  It was mostly Chinese jump rope. Sleep overs. Giggling. Soon to be illegal clicky-clackers that my grandma brought to us from Florida. Birthdays. Bedrooms. Pinky swears. American jump rope. A lot of, well, just jumping – from bicycles and jungle gyms. From car doors into freshly mown grass. From the pages of Archie comics. Maybe we should have seen the warnings — it was always Betty and Veronica. Never Midge. Never three.

I don’t remember the date. Nor the reason. My mom dropped me off at Shari’s house. There was no Jan. Something about a phone call. A fight. Tears. “Never again,” she said to me. How easy it was to say never at 7 years old. Within minutes the first surprise would be exceeded by the second. If there was no three, she explained, there would be no two. She had decided for all of us. I sat at the end of her driveway and waited the long two hours for my mother to pick me up. I thought of the last time we jumped rope together. Having no idea that when I was singing, “Vote, vote, vote for Shari…knock, knock, Jodi at the door, she’s a better woman she can do the wibble wobble, so we don’t need Shari anymore…” that it would be the last time.

I suppose the “last time” always comes too soon. I could not foresee living this lesson again and again. But I would. I have. I will. Again.

Some days I miss my mom so much, the weight of that driveway’s end seems unbearable. But I wave as I pass by her picture. Put on one of her blouses. Recall a memory of a trip. Jumping from store to store. See her dancing the wibble wobble. And I smile. The wait is never long. She continues to “pick me up.”

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The Italian.


I found the laminated card that my mom kept in her purse. It listed of all my surgeries. She grew tired of remembering and writing them down for insurance purposes, so she typed up a card and handed it to them. There were over twenty. Joint by joint.

She was the first to sign each plaster cast. I don’t know which number surgery we were on, (I suppose I could check the list)…but it was a full length cast on my left leg — she wrote in big blue sharpie — “Nurse Linda.” “Who’s that?” I asked, still in a bit of an anesthetized fog. “Me,” she said proudly, “If I’m going to be playing nurse all the time, I should be able to pick my own name.” I smiled. She struck a pose at the side of my hospital bed. We laughed until I threw up in the plastic bean beside me. She wiped my face with a warm washcloth. “Thank you, Linda.”

She had to use vacation days from work to be with me. She brushed it off, while I apologized. “Nurse Linda doesn’t care. It’s part of her job.” She made everything easier. With just those two words — Nurse LInda — she made even my plaster covered existence lighter. Trips to the hospital became vacation. Vacation from the norm. Vacation from reality. She did, in fact, have the power to heal me.

I had just started this recent painting. I emailed the beginnings to a friend of mine. “Is it a nurse?” she asked. I hadn’t thought about it yet, but of course it was — she was. This beautiful Italian woman appearing on my canvas was healing me. Taking me to a different time, a different place. A vacation for my heart and mind.

My mother’s name would change from time to time as needed. From Linda, she went to Goober, to Sparkle, Little Sister, Gilbert, (and now, she is “The Italian.”) We changed and grew. Adapted. Healed. And most of all, we had FUN — the greatest healer of all, I suppose. And even though none of this may continue, make no mistake about it – it is permanent! A love written in Sharpie. A love laminated on my heart.

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Until I let go…

I suppose the combinations are near infinite. Paper and paint. For a Christmas gift I received this tablet and a set of pastels. The person who bought them together wasn’t wrong. It was printed right there on the box and the tablet cover. They were supposed to get along. But I didn’t love how the pastels felt against it. The paper didn’t seem to want to hold the delicate medium. A few days ago I started using acrylics with this paper. Instant love. The paint grabbed onto the surface like it was meant to be there. The paper welcomed it home.  The combination worked perfectly, without the “should haves” and “supposed tos” of the manufacturer’s suggestions.  

When I was younger, I wasted a lot of time trying to fit into these guidelines. Trying to make people love me the way I needed to be loved. Or possibly worse, accepting “love” that I knew would never hold. It wasn’t until I let go, that it all started to come together. I let go of the norms. The rules placed upon me, or maybe the rules I placed upon myself. Either way, I released them. And everything that was once forced became natural. Became Art. Became Love. Beautiful.

Love, real love, is never wrong. You get to decide on your family, your friends, your life. And when you find it, it will just work. Without force, it will hold. You will be held in the open arms of “welcome home.”

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Be the giggle.


As someone who grew up in the ice and snow of a Minnesota winter, I consider myself a bit of an expert, but through the years I have found nothing to be as slippery as old habit.

I decided to take a new path yesterday. I turned left instead of right out of our driveway. Across the bridge then towards the city. Cars raced past me. It was louder. The sidewalk seemed a little harder. Maybe I should just turn back, I thought. But I kept going. Turned to go down the embankment. I could hear the sound of the river. Bienvenue, it rolled. The ground softened. The colors brightened. I stopped thinking and started looking. Flowers were new. Listening. Two young girls giggled as they waded in the sea of white flowers. It’s hard not to smile when you hear giggling. And soon everything seemed to be — the water, the trees, the fountain, the birds — they were all in on it…

There are days, I must admit, when my brain wanders down a negative path. And it knows the way. So easily it can slide. And replay the tapes of negativity. Over and over. Step after slippery step. I’m getting better at catching it – before I slide too far. I really have to take a sharp turn to a new thought. And it can be as simple as changing rooms. Reading a book in a new chair. Going outside. Turning left.

As uncomfortable as change can be, it may also be the gift we are looking for. The gift we can’t seem to find sliding down the same old path. A butterfly kissed my cheek just before arriving back home. I get it. The universe wants us to be happy!

Some might lose their way today. If you’re able, be the giggle that walks beside, then leads them home.

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Coffee and love.

I remember the last coffee my mom and I had with my grandma. She was sitting at her round table when we opened the door. An empty cup with coffee grounds just within reach. I bent down to hug her. She reached up her arms to grab hold. So frail. She started to push herself up against my shoulders.  “No, no… you don’t have to get up.”  “Yes, I do,” she said, “You’re here.” I knew I was loved.

Most of her cups were stained. Not dirty, but showed the years of use. We took two from the cupboard and sat with her. I had just sold a painting. I remember telling her for how much, and she made the big “OOOOOH” sound with her rounded mouth and clapped her hands together. With that one sound, I received more than any payment. 

It wasn’t long before her head was asleep against her fist. We washed the cups and helped her to bed. The waft of coffee and love followed us out the door.

I suppose that’s why I write the stories each day — to keep the smell of love brewed alive and following. My grandma’s love. My mother’s love. 

Not that long ago, I was struggling through the tears of tenderness. I was writing this daily blog. A dear friend told me, “You don’t have to do it every day.” “Yes, I do,” I replied, “She was here.”

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