Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: artist


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More who.

I’ve always thought I loved shopping, but the greater truth is I loved shopping with my mother. Oh, I still love clothes. I will play fashion show at home longer, and without the prompt of any “fashion week.” And I still visit the same stores we went to when returning to the US. But it’s not the same. And that’s not to be sad about it, but to celebrate it for what it was — pure joy! I can still hear her comments. Even when I knew something didn’t fit properly, I would come out of the dressing room just to hear her say, “That’s nice, did they have it in your size?” I use it to this day, even on myself. I’m still laughing.  And when the outfit is good, oh, I let myself know it too!  Just as she did, with unbridled enthusiasm. With an extra voila! With extended mirror time. With longer strides around the room — that’s the funny thing about joy, it always makes you taller!

I suppose it’s true about everything. It’s about the company we keep. Think about your favorite vacation. Your most delicious meal. Always more who than what. 

I try to be mindful about my branches. Open, yet thoughtful. Fluttering among those that make this seemingly ordinary stretch of wood unforgettable!  I’ll see you up there.

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No ladders.

I told him I needed a ladder. No, my grandfather replied. “But I have to get it back into the tree,” I said without crying, but just barely. Not about to change his response, but curiosity getting the best of him, he asked what. “The nest,” I said. He just smiled and again shook his head no. “A bird’s nest,” I reiterated, as if he just didn’t understand and surely with the added description he would go get the ladder and help me. But he didn’t. “The babies…” I pleaded, having never actually seen them, only heard them from below. “They’re fine. They’re already gone,” he explained. “How did they know? Were they ready?” I asked, still assuming we were all afforded that luxury. “You find a way,” he said, both of us knowing we were no longer talking about the birds. Both of us knowing that it was my house, my nest, that I missed. It was a ladder back to when my father lived with us. When everything seemed certain. A ladder back to the nest of trust and security. There was no ladder. We both knew I would have to find a way. He put his finger on the sore part of my heart, “They will be ok,” he said without crying, but just barely. And I knew, with the certainty of tree and the absence of ladder, that I would be too. 

I can’t say that through the years I have not asked for the ladder. Thinking, just get me over this. But I eventually get there. Never over. Always through. And my heart moves from sore, to soar. And I am saved.

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Without uniform.

Maybe it’s easier to see when we’re younger. Or maybe they do the work for us. Giving us uniforms. Gathering us together on buses and in classrooms. Cross-legged on floors in circles, whispering and giggling. They give us mascots and rally songs. And we are a part of something. 

And then they send us off into the world. Hoping it was enough. Hoping they gave us the skills to recognize those around us. To connect without uniform. 

And you know it when you do. As certain as if the rally song was playing behind you. Those friends, old and new, that know you as you become and become. As you change and grow. Those that walk beside you. In moments of pure joy. In the tenderness of sorrow. Through the uncertainties of success and loss. Always. All ways. Beside. Without hesitation, they join in the laughter, they answer each doubt, each question the same, “…because we’re friends.”

It was enough. It is enough. I see you. 

…because we’re friends.
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The depths of yes.

We didn’t have words like self care or journaling when she gave me the Nothing Book for my birthday. It was just as described, a hard covered book with blank pages inside. I carried it each day to my locker on the first floor of Central Junior High School. When she got off her bus, she would run to me and ask, straight from the words on the cover, “Did you make something of it?” It made us laugh every time, and every time the answer was yes. I’d show her my newest poem and we would revel in our insight. What time we were wasting, we thought, with social studies and geometry, when we understood at such depths, the poetry of this world. 

I still have this book. I still have this friend. And isn’t that, I suppose, the most beautiful poem of all. 

And it’s a question I still ask of myself daily, “Did you make something of it?” Referring to the day, the time given, the loves around me. And it’s not pressure, but more acccountability, as I see her opening the large middle doors of the junior high. I smell the bus fumes and cling my “something” to my eager chest. Ready to offer to her, to this world, what I have made. Knowing, that if I’m not giggling with the depths of yes, then I have to do more. Be more. She’s getting closer now, and I open to today’s page, smiling. Yes!

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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!

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Cardinals.

I suppose we could have been called anything, and I would have loved it, but we were Cardinals, so the moment I put on the red uniform, for volleyball, basketball, track, band, whatever, whenever, I, we, represented Independent School District #206, and proudly became those beautiful red birds. 

We shortened everything. Perhaps we were in such a hurry to grow up. The name of the town, Alexandria, became Alex, and then simply Alek. Cardinals became Cards, always led with a “Go!” I see the urgency now. To get somewhere. To win. And now, it all seems like a fluttering, a blur of red and black wings. 

The Alexandria Boys’ Basketball team won the state championship this weekend. I don’t live there anymore. Not even in the country. The high school that I went to has been torn down. I can’t name a player on this year’s team. But somehow, magically, in that winning flutter, I am part of the we — the “We did it!” 

Perhaps more than any team, I think the same when remembering my mother. With each victory big or small. Selling a painting, surviving a hard situation, conquering a fear, just being happy for no reason on a Monday morning — I look to the heavens and joyfully say, “We did it!”

We are only as strong as our connections. They don’t have to be cardinals, but they should lift you, help you reach things you never even imagined. They should be the ones you look to, recognize, call you by name, ever tell you, “one way or another, we are going to fly!”

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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?

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Paying attention.

She was the first to notice, the waitress in Stillwater, Minnesota. I have worn these earrings every day for a couple of years — the outline of the Sainte Victoire mountain. She brought the check to the table and asked, “What mountain is that?” I beamed, for me of course, but for her as well — being curious, paying attention. “It’s the Sainte Victoire,” I replied, “in Aix en Provence where we live.” And the conversation began, all because she was alive, awake!

These earrings represent home. Heart. Courage. Strength. They are the mountains I have, can, and will continue to climb daily. What made her, of all people, notice? Even in France, no one has asked about them. But she did. Maybe she was climbing her own mountain. Maybe she was asking her legs to carry what her heart just couldn’t bear at the moment. Or maybe she just liked them. And that’s enough too. The thing is, she asked the question. A specific question. 

We get lazy I think. Uninterested. We settle on the “how are you?”s and think we did enough. But is it? Is it enough? Is it enough to just pass through each other’s lives? Without learning? Without caring?  

Two years of climbing were wiped away in just a few brief seconds, and I was happy! It really takes so little. So I tell myself, I tell you, be curious, pay attention, — it’s not too much to ask. 

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The Rockies

I thought it was the biggest hill possible. Actually I didn’t give much thought to other ones, this was the one in our yard on Van Dyke Road. By the time I finished bundling — snow pants, extra socks to fit into hand me down boots, hat, mittens, scarf, hooded jacket — I could barely remember where I was headed, let alone get there. A slight push from my mother’s hand, and I was out the door. Walking past the picture window, I looked inside for assurance, and waddled my way to the side of the house, dragging my red plastic sled behind me. It was a quick slope that led to the renter’s door of the basement. If it had been possible to run in this outfit, I would have, but I could merely let myself fall into the aligned plastic rocket. The ride was quick, but spectacular. Worth every bundle. I rolled myself out of the sled and dragged it back up the hill again. And again. Until my socks had worked themselves into a bundle at my toes, my breath had frozen into my woolen scarf, and I could no longer feel my fingers. Returning to the warmth and safety behind the glass window.

I suppose there is no bigger hill than the one you are on. Driving through the Rocky Mountains yesterday, I had no need for bundling, not the outer kind anyway. It was warm in the car. My fingers would not freeze upon the wheel. But I did gather myself in. Collected myself in what I have already climbed. My mother kept a yellow sticky note by her phone that read, “What haven’t you gotten through?” 

Reaching Denver, I smiled. The sun shone as brightly as a yellow note that held. We had once again made it through, and it was spectacular!

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Bouncing between.

I was never one for magic — I mean the “magician” kind. I guess I was always afraid of disappearing.

I didn’t have the words for it then. I’m not even sure I was aware of what I was doing when I began to write and paint at five years old. But I knew how it felt. This creating something. An extension of myself on the paper, through words and images. When I would present it with two hands to my mother, just outside of my bedroom door, she would stop whatever she was doing. Whatever occupied her hands at the moment, be it dishrag or mascara, she put it down, and gave me her full attention. And never was I more seen. My heart. My being. On full display. In full acceptance. The warmth that bounced between us seemed to light up this hallway stage, and I thought this was the only magic I ever needed. 

When my father left, and my mother felt sad, I could feel that light begin to dim. I wasn’t going to let her disappear. I began writing about her. Poems, prayers and promises. On sheets of paper. On pieces of wood. And the stage changed from house to apartment, to apartment again. But the magic remained. 

Maybe it’s the way with all artists. We begin to create to prove that we exist, and then continue to show the others that they do too. 

I was only a few strokes in yesterday when I began to cry. It’s my first painting of Grandma Elsie. I wasn’t sad. Nor nervous. I hadn’t even yet called on the magic before it dropped in. She is coming to life in my studio. 

I guess it’s the same with real life — the more we see others, the more we connect, the more we feel alive. Now that doesn’t mean you have to paint. Or write. But you do have to connect, however it may be, to keep that light shining, bouncing between. There are a million different forms it can come in, but I suppose it’s always love — love is the only magic that keeps us from disappearing. Ever seen. Ever alive.

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