Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: answer the call


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One Terry.

It wasn’t long after I realized that everyone didn’t have them, these Tech-ers in the basement, that they were gone. It’s clear now that we needed the money more than the space. We went through at least three cycles of young men from the law enforcement class. I only remember one’s name – Terry Eilers. Maybe because he was also our bus driver, but mostly I think because he was nice to me. And wasn’t that everything? —when there was just one unlocked door at the bottom of the stairs that separated them from our laundry. 

Before lessons were learned, I race from upstairs to downstairs without a glance. It was one of the men from the first group of three. (Everyone over 17 seems like a man when you are six.) He was building a canoe in the driveway to our basement. Fascinated by anything being built, I was probably annoying. Watchful. Eager to know the bend of wood. And what was that green stuff? What was he putting on the shell? Certainly he must have my best interests at heart, I thought, he lived with us after all.  He was going to enforce the law. He told me to touch the canoe. I poked one hesitant finger out of my sleeve and touched it as if it were a hot pan on the stove. No, really get in there, he said. Rub your arm across it. I don’t why I did. Just like the heat from a hot pan, it took a minute for the tiny shards of glass, the insulation, to reach my brain. And it took longer, I suppose, wondering not why the pain, but more, why did he want to inflict it? 

I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. I ran up the browning hill of fall grass. Through the garage door. Down the stairs to the laundry room in the basement. Took off the painful sweater and placed it in a basket. It was the first time I noticed there was no lock on that door. It was the first time I needed one. 

I stayed upstairs for the rest of their time. The next group came. They called one “Buzz” I think because of his hair, but I remained at a distance. 

When Terry Eilers came the next year, slightly overweight in his tan shirt and brown pants, the new uniform of the students, he smiled at me from behind the big bus wheel. I don’t know how many rides it took before I trusted him, but I did.

It’s no longer a technical school, but a college. They have their own housing now, I guess. Call it whatever you want, I hope we’ve all learned along the way. Kindness is memorable. 

Some will try to take it away. Innocence. Curiosity. Joy. Others still will pick you up when you need it most. It only takes one Terry.

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First I was a cowboy.

It’s one of my favorites in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay. Maybe because it feels most like me. 

It didn’t start out as a museum. At one point it was a train station, 

even a parking lot, long before it housed the most beautiful impressionists in the world. I suppose I’ve always known it — that I would have to become, and keep becoming.

When I was a kid, I thought I would just figure stuff out, you know, and be something, and that would be it…that would be my life. Because didn’t they always ask, “What are you going to be?” And especially at this time of year, as we prepared to dress up and go from door to door asking for our treat behind the question, “What are you supposed to be?” 

At first I was a cowboy, (was this my train station?). Then I was a hobo, (my parking lot?) It took a long time to become an artist. This was me. Who I was supposed to be. 

I think that I, we, just have to keep becoming. We change and grow. We are molded by love and trips around the sun. It takes a long time to build a soul. We get older, maybe wiser, (even better, we gain a little grace) but we don’t finish – we don’t have to – we begin, and be, and begin again. I think that’s the gift of living…the joy of being alive!

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Huile d’olive.

Of course I was going to get in. Everything I had done up until this moment was about taking the chance, saying yes. So when she pulled her car up next to me and stopped, I walked up to the open window. She said the French equivalent of “get in” twice. And it’s surprising how quickly the brain can weigh all the options in a splintering of a second. I opened the door and sat down, and said “OK…” We both let out a nervous laugh, neither quite sure of what we were agreeing to.

It was her husband and son-in-law I had painted. The two men on my daily path. She had stopped me once before and applauded me in my paint splattered shorts from behind the car wheel. We were connected by nothing but sharing the same path. (And isn’t that everything?)

My mind tried to leave the proverbial bread crumbs as she wound us down the gated path. Through the sea of olive trees. Past the pool. She apologized that it was becoming green. She opened the shutters and we walked into her home. She unlocked the armoire and pulled out the most beautiful bottle of olive oil. This was their art — their exchange for the painted portrait. I held the weight of it close to my heart and thanked her in both languages.

I asked about her husband. I don’t see him anymore on my daily walk. The Alzheimer’s no longer allows his trip. A small tear, hers or mine, said he still makes the journey each day on the canvas.

I walked home knowing we always have the tools to connect, if we share the best of us. If we dare the best of us, ourselves.

It’s only a painting. It’s only olive oil. But it’s everything.

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Doors opening.

Although she only sat down for one, Days of Our Lives, the soap operas played all afternoon on my grandma’s television set in the living room of their farm house. Of course we could hear them as we ran in and out of the screen door, up to the corner kitchen cupboard with the Lazy Susan that held all of the candy. We’d spin ourselves almost dizzy trying to decide between the blur of Black Cows, Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, and all things sweet. 

Deep into our sugared highs, we acted out the parts we heard from the other room. Using words we didn’t know, but kept repeating them, whispering them into our sweaty hands covered in sticky giggles, after our Aunt Lillian warned us that to say them aloud was to risk living them. 

In no way do I believe that my summer antics, nor my cousins’, brought to life all of those whispered words we seem to be living within. We say them out loud now. Words like divorce and affair and death and cancer. The only real difference, what they consolidated in less than an hour on the television, has taken a lifetime for most of us, but certainly we have all been touched. 

And I think it’s ok to say them out loud. To not hide from them. Not give them the power. To voice our struggles and our fears, whatever they may be. Maybe we knew something as children. We weren’t afraid of any of it. Not the words, nor the warnings. Nothing could stop us. Not screen, nor cupboard, or door of any kind. We raced through it all together.

I suppose I write the words each day in order to release them from the living room set. To fling open the doors and tell you it’s ok. To show you. To run with you. Play with you, amidst it all. We’ve never had the power to rid the world of all the difficulties. The pain and the struggles. But we’ve always had the power to find, still, the dizzying joy, the sweaty laughter. 

I fling open the screen door. Are you with me? 

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Ready to swing.

It probably wasn’t obvious, given the size and gender — and the Hvezda boys, these strapping sons of Rueben, these born of the earth, farm raised young men, quite probably held their own in the country school just up the road — but I would have to say that it was my mother on more than one occasion who proved to be strongest. 

And she was tired. She, being the second of nine, and the oldest girl, worked side by side her mother. Washing the continuous dishes. Changing the diapers. Retrieving the dolls thrown up apple trees by brothers endlessly tormenting sisters. Her arms weary from rocking and cradling babies she didn’t choose, but took in, one by one. 

But those arms, that dangled long and heavy by her side, weighted by work, and books, and a metal lunchbox, found the strength to defend her brother Tom, from the endless teasing of Arne Zavadil. He never saw her coming, as he pushed and taunted this young boy struggling with words. He never expected this quiet, arm-weary sister to rise up from the ditch in front of the white school house and swing that metal lunch box with all of might, and flatten him to the ground. She wiped the blood from the lunch box on the grass and walked home to help her mother. 

I don’t imagine Tom thanked her. He still found a way to tease his sisters. But strength untouted is still strength. Without the need for boast or gratification, those who do the work, the endless work, and still show up, these are the strongest of us. The most brave. 

Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, I can wonder if it all matters. Heart and arm weary I wonder if the words on page make a difference. If the paint on canvas is wasted. But then I feel her, walking to school, step by step, and I am stronger. Ready to swing with all of my might. To defend what’s right. To rise up from the ditch and protect the ones I love, even the ones who just hours before “left my favorite doll out in the rain.” I am ready to defend. To rock and cradle. To swing if necessary. To love with a strength undenied.

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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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Forever Connected.

I hate that someone else has her phone number now. Our phone number. The phone number I memorized since I was five. Carried with me. Still do. I hate that they won’t take the time to memorize it (nobody does anymore.) No, they’ll just plug it into their cell phone’s memory and forget about it. It won’t be held in their hearts and brains like a safety net. It will just be one click of a button. It won’t be dialed. Written on papers. Given to friends. Friends’ parents. It won’t be given the reverence so deserved. Our sacred phone number. My mom’s phone number.

763-5809. That number was the reason I dared to attempt my first sleep-over at Cindy Lanigan’s house. The same number that told my mom to come and pick me up the minute it got dark (outside and/or in my imagination.) These were the numbers that erased miles and distance. Allowed me to go to college. To get a job. To quit that job and begin a life. To become. These were the numbers that allowed me to fall in love. Move to another country, and still have my mother within reach.

They weren’t just numbers. And to think of someone just casually dialing them now. Or not bothering to dial at all…

These numbers were birthdays and holidays. Meetings and come find me! These numbers were “I need you,” and “I love you,” and “I’m right here.” I guess if you know this, you can use these numbers. And that will be OK, good even. Use them in the same respectful way. Know that there was love in that connecting line. Real love in every number.

If you are lucky enough to now travel in that line, please be open, be kind, be there. She would like that. That’s who she was. I guess I’d like that too. I’m dialing right now. Forever connected.

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Phone!!!!!!!!

It’s not true to say we didn’t play with our grandma’s phone. Not the way children do now. We weren’t prompted with apps, or videos, but we did have fun!

There was only one telephone in this house that raised nine children. And it was a party line (meaning the neighbors also used it.) The chord for the receiver rested in a heap on the kitchen floor. It had to be long. It had to stretch through the kitchen to the stairs. I suppose we could have set the receiver down and then walked up the stairs to yell at grandma in the sewing room, but instead, when getting a call, we clutched the phone to our chest and walked it and the cord as far as it would go, disappearing all the coils to a flat line. Grandma would then waddle the call. Pull the receiver from our sweaty hands and “talk on swede” so we couldn’t understand. It was so exotic. It was all my cousins and I could do to not to crawl through the line and enter this magical world. Instead, when grandma was off the phone, we would sneak back and hope to listen in on the neighbor’s conversation. I don’t know how she knew, but she always did — yelling at us from the sewing machine, “Hang up the phone.” We hung it up, but did the next best thing, taking turns wrapping ourselves up like mummies in the coil of the cord. Standing on the “lazy susan” we could spin ourselves free, until someone threw up from the dizzy.  We didn’t have the internet, but oh, the places we went on that single landline.

I was listening to a podcast the other day while going for a walk. It would have been hard to imagine that one day my phone could be with me, miles from home. The magic is still dizzying. The podcast expert was comparing the progression of our times. Unfortunately we have not made the advances proportionate to our advantages. And it got me thinking, questioning, am I? Am I doing the best with what I have? I hope so. I want to! I want to be as curious as I was when the coil of the phone wrapped around my face. When I could travel in time and space with only my imagination. There is so much still for all of us to learn. To experience. We just can’t lose sight of the magic. 

The morning sun is ringing off the hook!  I race to the day, yelling “Phone!!!!!!!!” 

Answer the call.

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