Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: anticipation


by Leave a comment

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? 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

The attempt.

There is a real difference between paper, canvas and panel. Each one takes the paint in its own way. Likes a different brush stroke, even a different brush. And I don’t like one more or less for it. I’m trying to do the same with people. 

I’m not saying it’s easy. But I think just being aware, it helps me fight it less. Sure I still come with all of my seemingly best skills, but they don’t work for everyone. And sometimes I get through my whole wheelhouse — are you paper, canvas, panel? Now what? Then you look at me with all of that leather or lace, that ceramic or stone, and I know I have to try again. I used to think, well, why do I have to change? And the answer is I don’t. None of us do. But if we want to include the people in our lives that provide a challenge, (and I say provide here, because they are giving us an opportunity to grow), if we do want to include them, we may have to thin out the paint a little, and try again. Not giving up on our skills, but enhancing them. Because most likely, they are doing the same, and with any luck, we find a colorful way to be together. 

Someone said yesterday, it sounds like a prayer. And maybe it is. I write, not because I have the answers, but because I’m trying to learn them. Day by day. Bit by bit. I have always believed, even when I, we, fail, there is love in the attempt. And if we can see that, we can do anything. 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Around and under and within.

There’s only so many times, even with youth’s tenacity, that a person can run around a farm house and only come in second place. He was always fast, my cousin Shawn. And while I was happy for him, being related and all, I did want to beat him. We wore a path around our grandparents’ home. My bumper tennis shoes always just in the shadow of his latest trend from New Brighton. I mention it only because that was my first thought — it must be his city shoes that outran my local Iverson’s. Or, I hate to admit it, I did have the thought, well, maybe it was because he was a boy…even then I cringed and ran around again.

He was staying for a week. So I stayed too. Each day we ran in circles. Each day our grandfather walked to the field. Each morning we ate Kellogg’s cereal from the variety pack box. Fueled by pure sugar, we chased the morning down.

Sweaty and fed up with losing by Wednesday noon, I asked my grandfather when he returned for lunch, what was the difference between patience and enough already. He took two steps to my four and said, “work.” “I don’t get it,” I said. “You have to enjoy it somehow, the work of it, or there’s no point.” “But I keep losing?” “But are you having fun?” I started to think. I did like being here. Outside. Summer. Racing. Round and round. I did love it. I smiled and ran to the house.

I think about it now. How he never said anything about his lawn, about the paths we wore so very thin, while his patience never did. I’m sure in his head he must have gotten to “enough already,” with all those grandchildren. All those questions, but it never showed. I guess he loved us.

I can’t tell you if my blue bumper tennis shoes ever crossed the front sidewalk in first place. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But I ran. We ran. Over and over. Around and under. Within summer’s warmth. And I won.

I’m still winning. Painting in my sketchbook daily, I suppose you could call it work, perhaps patience. Or am I carrying that farmer to his field, step by step? I have no need to finish. I keep on loving.

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Inhaling.

I was listening to a short story while walking yesterday. Somewhere between the farmhouse, the stranger, the shooting, the sheriff, the horses, the chase, the lost love, the death, the title revealed, my feet had climbed the Montaiguet without ever telling my breath. And it really came as no surprise, stories have always carried me. 

I began to learn the power of words at age five. Mrs. Strand read to us in kindergarten. I loved her for it, but I had a sense of urgency to get to the first grade where I knew we would learn to read for ourselves. I’d like to think I took my time. I’d like to think I thanked Mrs. Strand, but I can’t be sure. It was her words that launched me into the front row of Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade class. I wanted to sit as close to her as possible. If the words she wrote on the blackboard were to travel into her pointing stick as she tapped the word on the board, and be flung into the open and wandering minds of all the wriggling 6 year olds, I wanted those words, that power, to hit me first — so even in this front row middle seat, I leaned ever forward, closer still. And I must have been breathing because I’m still here, but it felt like a year, a glorious year of inhaling. 

I joyfully rode that air. Every word she gave to us, I gave to my mother in poems. When the wind was knocked out from inside of her. I, we, replaced it with the hope of each letter. Arranged them again, and again, until we were lifted. Until without our knowledge or permission, we were looking out gratitude’s vast view, and we were saved.

I don’t know if it works for everyone. But I take the chance that maybe it does. I keep writing the words daily. Bringing you inside farmhouse and classroom, on top of bicycles and mountains, on the chance that you too will forget the labor of breath, and only feel the heights reached from all that inhale. 

Look around. We’ve come this far!

Shop Now!


by 1 Comment

In the after.

In the last three weeks I have finished two commissions. What a ride! And as I sit in the after, I go through each step. The building of the panel. The seemingly endless sanding. Gessoing. The background. The images. Coming to life. Stroke after stroke. Pure joy. And without my knowledge or permission, the pieces come to an end. As I knew they would. Still, it’s a surprise. And I have to ship. Build a box strong enough to house all that joy. And then let go. Give it over to the man in the white van. The same man who will push the wrong button, or no button, and I will get the message that “We came by to pick up your package, but you weren’t home, so you’ll have to deliver it.” And I will read it again and again, without my package, certain that both paintings were lost forever. I will spare you the 12 hours of panic…they did get back in the tracking system, and are now across the sea in their new homes. 

I suppose these aren’t lessons to be learned. Not this loving. This living. If we did, learn the lessons, we probably wouldn’t do anything. Love anyone. We can know, but still, we must simply go through it all. As I sit in the after, the portraits of my mother, my grandparents, I would do it all again and again. Love them with every color of my heart, every stroke of my being. 

And it will bring me to the next canvas. And I will begin and end and begin again. And give thanks for it all. From joy to panic to joy again. Click.

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

Wild Asparagus.

It’s not just the taste, which is delicious, but it’s the hunt, the picking, presenting it to my husband, seeing it still a little wild on the table, then making it into an omelette, mixing the vibrant green with the yellow and adding a little hot sauce on top — this is the pure enjoyment of asparagus season. And it makes me feel special, to walk on the path with so many of the empty-handed, while mine are filled with green. 

It doesn’t last that long, but it doesn’t have to. Perfection knows no time constraints. As with all good things, it will come to an end with a bit of a surprise, but I have no thoughts of that now, as I’m putting on my shoes. And it occurs to me, I hope with everything, everyone, I can live like that, love like that. Cherish the season, for however long it lasts. Feel special for the time given. And just enjoy it for what it is. 

Soon my new shoes will be dampened with dew. And I will bend over with delight at each tiny stalk. And I will forget the promises I made on paper to life and love and just be in nature’s joy, with hands that are full. And in all that cherished season, I will forget to take the photos of asparagus on table, and I will simply enjoy, and that will be good too! 

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Open waters.

They aren’t always so clear. So when I get an obvious sign, I like to celebrate it.

I was thinking the exact same thing when he said, “I like to see the open waters.” I smiled and agreed. What was cold and white, frozen, just a couple of months ago, now rippled and danced blue under a changing sky.

I don’t know if nature is as silly as we humans. Suffering and fighting the cracks. Or does it simply release? They say we have to be cracked open, that’s where the love gets in. But each time it happens, I have a tendency to forget. Put up a struggle. And it’s not like my heart hasn’t been through the “winter months” before…found its way to spring…so why do I, we, fight it? I guess as with everything, we have to be in it to know. So for now, I will simply enjoy the water’s release into the new season. I will flow with the promise of spring and try to keep it in my memory — this nature of things.

Oh, to be open! To it all! Come spring! Cracks and all! I feel buoyant already!

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Rocks at first glance.

You had to want to see them — and we did. We were even told where to look, and yet, for a split second, it was hard to distinguish them from the rocks of every other beach. And they weren’t beautiful, until I realized that they were seals. When I imagined these lumps up from their naps, barking and flopping, when I watched the slow up and down of their jiggly breaths, they became alive, real, fascinating even! The longer I looked, stories were revealed. One pup headed back from the water (I guess even seal children struggle to take a nap.) Two snuggled a little closer to each other. They weren’t all the same. These seemingly lifeless rocks at first glance had a story to tell.

I worry about how much we miss. How much we pass by. How many humans we just write off. What if we took the time to really see? I suppose it’s impossible to know everyone’s story, but what if we just acknowledged that everyone has one, that everyone is on a journey. What if we allowed each other to explore? To dare the sea? What if we allowed each other to rest? All in our own time. From ship to shore. Wouldn’t it all, wouldn’t we all, seem a little more beautiful?

Shop Now!


by Leave a comment

Three pounds of Twizzlers.

I suppose we always want what we can’t have. So when she asked me if she could bring me anything from the US, I said red licorice. We don’t have it in France. Nor jelly beans. This shouldn’t be a surprise when you know that Hershey chocolate bars are in the exotic aisle of the grocery store, along with the peanut butter. 

I kind of forgot about it. They had been here for hours, my American friends, before she brought out the gift bag. As she placed it in front of me, I saw the tip of red sticking out. Twizzlers! A two pound bag! I said, “If there are jelly beans in there as well, I might just pass out.” There were, and I didn’t. And then he said, “I brought some too. It’s my go-to travel candy.” He went to his suitcase and brought out at least another pound. “The bag is resealable,” he said, both thinking that seems highly unnecessary, and I knew I was with my tribe. 

If we remembered the countless things that connect us, maybe our country, our countries, wouldn’t feel so divided.

My mother loved jelly beans. Red were her favorite (mine as well). Then yellow. Orange. Green sometimes. White in desperation. Purple, never. She gave purple to the birds and sometimes her mother in the back seat on long car journeys. Driving, I would never have to wonder or even ask what color she passed back to my grandma, be it jelly bean or Tootsie pop. Before her hand even reached over the seat, we would begin to laugh. It’s not like she didn’t know. Even Helen Keller would have seen the lack of randomness in candy choice. It didn’t take many miles for her to join in. Cupping her hands around the sugared treat, she said, “You know I like purple.” I’m still laughing. 

What a thing it is to know someone. Without labels. Only by experience. To know my mother needed narrow shoes. My grandma, wide. Yet, their hands were surprisingly similar. Maybe no one “needs” three pounds of Twizzlers, but as the weight dwindles day by day, I am reminded where I come from. My joyful red heart beats wide open, never to be resealed.