Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: artist, art, painting, living, lessons, humanity, open, heart, table, come over, welcome


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So we fell back, now what?

It’s funny to me that we don’t all turn the clocks at the same time. We did in France this morning. The US will do it next weekend. It probably shouldn’t seem strange, after all if I really think about it, when did any of us change at the same time?

I remember once at the Office Depot in Minneapolis, the morning after the time change, we were discussing it at the counter while waiting to ship out packages. A few liked the extra hour of sleep. One dismayed over the upset to her sleep pattern. Another, and the most surprising, said, “Oh, I don’t do it.” Well, what do you mean? We all asked. She explained, with complete certainty, “Oh, I just change my watch a few minutes throughout the year, so when the time to change actually comes, it doesn’t seem that drastic.” But then you’re never, ever, at the right time, we questioned still. “No,” she smiled, as if that were completely fine with her. 

I guess we all find a way to navigate through this world. 

My mother always loved to dance in the kitchen. In our second house on Van Dyke Road, there was a large, heavy light fixture overhead the “dance floor.” I was downstairs when I heard the call of the music. Peeking around the corner, my delight turned to horror, as I saw one of her long arms rising to the beat and knocking the weighted glass. It tumbled, just missing her head, and came crashing to the floor. Without missing a beat of the music, (the music always continues to play), she looked at the fear on my face and said, “But did you see me dance though…”. 

So we fell back a little, we still have to, get to, rise up!

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Très Élégant

While most of the kids on Van Dyke Road were told each morning to “get dressed,” it was my mother who told me simply, quietly, to “dress.” I learned the difference quite early on. To get dressed was merely to cover. Anyone can do that, she said. We were dressing. Completing an ensemble. A package of self-esteem and self fulfilling prophecy. I watched from bathroom to closet to full length mirror. Proof that what she was saying was true, as it carried her with style and grace daily to Independent School district #206.

I dressed to go into Aix yesterday. We just had a few errands, but I made sure I was belted, smoothed and scarved. Approaching the other side at the first crossing into the city, she smiled at me and said that I was
“Très Élégant.” I clutched my imaginary pearls and thanked her, feet no longer touching the ground. I’m not sure how long I floated, (I’ll tell you if I stop). Of course a compliment feels wonderful, and it will always lift you. (Never underestimate the power of a compliment.) But it was more than that. The smiling woman, the complimenting woman, she was wearing a ruffled blouse, a crisp, white ruffling Ivy blouse. Proof, once again.

My heart is full, and completely dressed.

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Muriel’s father.

In the beginning, I had so few, I could remember everyone’s favorite. She liked the heart, my mom’s friend, Carol. It read, “Sometimes, someone says something really small and it fits into that tiny space in your heart, and fills it.” 

She came to the studio yesterday to pick up her painting. Seeing the new ones, she said, “Oh, I like this woman, but I love her,” pointing to the one that I wonder, perhaps, looked most like her. I hope so. 

Turning to looking at the large canvas, she asked if this was Margaux. I smiled because it was the second time that day, with two different images, that people wondered if the painting was of Margaux. I smiled because I could hear my mother’s voice when people would say, “Oh, that’s so me,” and my mother would reply, “Well, actually…it’s about me.” I smiled because people could see themselves. I smiled because Margaux was coming to life everywhere. I smiled because, holding her painting, her father, she said, “It’s so special.” Those tiny little words fit directly into the space of my heart that needed to be filled, the space that my brain still thinks, oh, that’s Carol’s space — which will always make me smile. 

Heart full, I was, I am, a part of it all, and I am home.

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Also mine to carry.

If my mother resembled my grandfather, it was mostly in the length of their strides. My first memories were three to one, counting mine as I raced behind them. I marveled at their strength and purposeful speed. But it wasn’t an angry pace, I could tell by the loose swinging of arms, feeling that same joy as my own danced around my waist. 

It’s a blur of how I went from three to two, to matching their strides completely. I can still feel the thrill of reaching out to that hand that swung back. Did it rest a little longer? Did I reach a littler farther? Didn’t all time stop as I clasped my sweaty palm into the certainty of love followed? Somehow I knew, it was also mine to carry. A joyful duty of continuing love’s long stride. 

It’s funny how I had focused so on their feet, when it was their hands all along. The reaching out, the reaching back, the reaching out again. The sun is coming up. My heart tells my arms to swing. 

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Becoming.

She wrote to me, in French, that this portrait reminded her of her older sister who was no longer with them. She said she could see the sadness that she carried, (tristesse), but it also gave her hope (l’espoir). 

One thing does not disappear the other. We live in between. And maybe that’s where all the beauty lies, if we choose to see it, in the transitions. In the state of becoming. I often have to remind myself, as I’m hurrying to “get through.” As if the furious speed held the answers. 

There is no finishing. The woman wrote of her sister as “no longer with them,”…but yet, here we are, talking about her, in two languages. So isn’t she here, hovering between the sadness and hope, with just the slightest turn of head, turn of lip, her message ready to wing on, and on…

L’espoir.

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Cuts and trimmings.


She waited a long time to be framed. It wasn’t until I removed the existing panel to paint on the opposite side, that she had her opening. I did have to trim her ever so slightly, but she was more than willing. And now it’s her time. She’s not more important to me, I loved her from the first paint stroke, but now others perhaps can see her, for all that she is, ruffled and strong, worthy of framing. 

It’s something to be given first hand sight. To watch the becoming of another. I was given that gift with my mother. Of course I loved her from coddled elbow, to grabbing at ankles. From two stepping in her elongated stride. To catching scattered tears in chubby palms. Dancing under the umbrella of her smile. I never imagined that others couldn’t see it. 

She took her cuts and trimmings with a grace that I knew would one day be framed. And I watched her grow into that knowledge herself. I watched the fragile ruffles grow in strength every day. Simply. Beautiful. 

When she first saw this painting, she said, “Oh, I want that blouse.” And in that statement I could hear the confidence of the wearing. She knew she could hold up every curve, with an earned and glorious grace. It was her time. My heart will ever frame.

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Charly, Chuck and Charles.

I hadn’t noticed it until the other day. I brought the painting of Charly inside from the studio. I set her beside another painting. It wasn’t until the next day I thought, “Oh, Charly is with Chuck.” And then I realized that Charles was just below them downstairs. These three sharing a name couldn’t be more different — not similar in age, gender, nor hobby, yet they were all connected. (A rose by any other Chuck…)

I was on a painstakingly long phone call with the bank. We went through my account number, my social security number, my PIN number, the code sent to a separate phone, and then finally she asked me, “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” Deep in the annoyance of trying to prove my identity, there I was, still connected to all that I loved the most. My grandparents. My mother. I laughed, and spelled it, nobody ever understands the silent H of Hvezda.

I don’t know if Charly, Chuck and Charles will ever meet. But I’d like to think they know. I’d like to believe they feel something bigger than themselves. A connection with a silent C, but connected just the same. Perhaps we all are… roses.

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Checking yes.

I’ve always loved paper. Even before the freedoms of learning to ride a bicycle and then a car, there was something so liberating about the writing of words. The clarity of question, thought, and answer, right there at the end of a #2. We all knew it. I suppose that’s why we passed the notes in class. All feelings could be declared or denied, with the simple checking of a box. Do you like him?  Check yes or no. Where are you going after school? Check practice or Hardees. 

Maybe it’s why I continue to write — a simple checking of yes to the day. It’s still so powerful and clear. A way to remember. A way to forget. A letting in and a letting go. Simply with words. 

My #2 is often replaced electronically. But it will never replace the feeling of holding it in my hands. The questions. The hopes. Dreams. The story. 

When I tell you mine, and then you share yours, it is the pedaling of banana seat bikes and wind in our hair. It is the release of laughter ridden into. It is an open car window on a summer’s road, releasing music from an AM radio – KDWB 63. It is the exclamation point of a giant X that goes beyond the edges of the yes box. 

Humans were made to connect. I ask myself daily — Can we do this? Can we do this together? Can we feel the freedoms of connection? I know my answer. Are you checking yes or no? 

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Oh, Bean.

I missed it the first time checking the mailbox. I went back and read the email. The carrier said it was “delivered to a secure location.” I went back down the driveway. Oh, there it is… I guess for some, delivered to a secure location is simply thrown out of a moving vehicle over the gate and into the bush.

We all have our own definitions.

I don’t know why I called it a bean. Maybe I couldn’t say blanket yet, and certainly not security. It wasn’t big. I’m sure it came with one of my dolls. It had the same smell of their heads, somewhere between plastic and baby powder, and while clutching to my chest, the scent directly went from nose to heart, and I was saved.

There was always a frantic search before leaving the house. I had to have my bean before entering the car that would traverse the gravel of Van Dyke Road. I’m not sure we gave a thought to seat belts, but my mom and I knew that that mini blanket, this would save me.

I suppose it happened naturally. One day it got left behind and I made the journey without it. Maybe it was at the bottom of the laundry. Possibly even in the driveway. Somehow, the security remained. Enough to get me past the railroad tracks, the freeway, the airport.

L’Occitane makes a hand cream with the exact scent. I buy it here in France. It’s funny, with just a smoothing on my hands, I smile. Oh, Bean. I am delivered to my secure location, and I am home.

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The swell.

I’m expecting something in the mail today. Even as I’m typing it, I can feel the pebbles of Van Dyke Road beneath my feet, walking out to the mailboxes. It’s not lost on me that it was the place of most of my arrivals and departures. Where I got on the bus for school. Off the bus for home. Where I began my descent on bicycle down the hill. Where I caught my breath after returning. Where I stood silent, waiting for the firefighters, watching our house burn. Where I listened to the carpenters rebuild. Where I sat, ever hopeful, ever looking forward, under the slight shade that the mailboxes offered, having ordered something from the Bazooka Joe comics. 

And isn’t it something, I think, to be this far, in time and distance, within all of life’s hellos and goodbyes, to still be hopeful, excited, to be looking forward to.

It was my mother who bought me the plaque from Herberger’s basement — the image of a little girl in front of the store — and it read, “Buy while the purse yet swells with youth.” I can’t say that I knew exactly what it meant at the time, being deep in the swell of it all. But I know now. I even know what that little girl looks like. I have painted her so many times without my knowledge or permission (and isn’t that in itself so “swell.”)

It’s hours before the mail will come. The pebbles jump beneath my feet. 

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