Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: beauty


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Fresh.

I was picking out an avocado when I saw her. Maybe eight or nine years old. Standing in the middle of the grocery aisle. Completely engrossed in her book. It was probably one of her first non-picture books. I remember that thrill. (It’s not lost on me that the name of the store is Fresh.)

I was so proud the day she, our librarian at Washington Elementary, introduced us to the grown-up books. All barriers were down. All worlds open. Books with spines and plots and nothing but words. Books that were entrusted to our care for seven full days. A responsibility I did not take lightly.

Even though library time was just after lunch, I did not put my chosen book into my locker, nor in my desk, but kept it nestled in my corduroy lap. I kept it open on the bus. Devouring each word. Only pulling it to my chest when the teenage boys threw balls or papers or sometimes fits.

Our driveway on VanDyke road was maybe only four car-lengths, but I read my way to the door. Then to the chair by the picture window. Lighting each words with the reverence it deserved.

Nothing has changed for me. Neither time nor country can diminish my love for books. I still let out an audible gasp when the newest release from a favorite author arrives in our local bookstore, or when gifted such a treasure by a friend. I saw that love in this little girl’s eyes as she bumped her way through the aisles to meet her father in the cash line. Never closing the book. Never averting her eyes, ripened with desire. She was one of us now, I thought, and smiled — smiled for her journey, mine, and the future.

The sun is coming through the windows now. Brightening the words I type. A daily responsibility that I never take lightly. My heart tumbles and bumps its way fresh onto the screen, and I smile, for this page ever open.

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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.


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In all of this wild. 

I have to admit, (physically and metaphorically) I’m shooting most of my photos in the wind. As I walk along the gravel path, the wildflowers seem to pop up, blooming as proof that it can be done, even in the strongest of winds that race directions through the hills. Some barely petaled, they still have the audacity of hopeful beauty, and I think, if I could just catch them mid sway, it would be like capturing the wind…and if I did, in fact, capture that wind, it would find its way into my heart, spreading limb to limb, and even against all forces of the natural and unnatural, I too, would dance. 

So even as the sun blinds the screen of my phone, I point and shoot, not knowing until much later what will appear. Looking at yesterday’s photos from the comfort of home, I have to swivel in my chair. I smile at the blurred backgrounds — the forgotten hardships — and see the dancing petals. So fragile. So strong. So beautiful. And I smile, knowing today, it just might be me, who flowers in all of this wild. Me, barely petaled, who dances in the wind.

…and so she would dance.
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With all that raggedy trust.

When I was five I began drawing. Six, writing. Every paper in my tiny bedroom was filled. I sat on my twin bed and poured out my heart to the Raggedy Ann and Andy sheets. Emboldened with their always smiling and gentle approval, I held the paper in my plattered, chubby hands, and presented it to my mother. She knew the gift that it was, and welcomed it with a caring so safe, so loving, that I knew I could do it again and again. 

I did it daily. When my mother passed, it was that little girl that looked directly at me, that looks at me every day, hands and heart extended, she asks me where she is to go. And she’s so small. And I don’t want to hurt her. She’s still so filled with ideas and belief, and I can’t turn her away. When she comes to me, with all that raggedy trust, I smile, and do the best that I can with what she is offering. I tell her what she has made, what we have made, is something special, and I clutch it to my beating chest before setting it free. 

If you’re reading this, I, we, stand before you, so small, but still believing it matters. And I will do it, again, and again.

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Around every barn. 

I want to hold her – this little girl that sits in front of me. Tiny tears cling to her eyelashes, knowing that if they fall, so will the secret — the one she kept, mostly from herself. One salty drop lands upon her thigh, and she says she had told her mother that she didn’t want to have a babysitter anymore. Not this one anyway. But she couldn’t tell her why. She couldn’t say that this young woman frightened her. Wanted her to do bad things. Dirty things. She couldn’t say that she took her behind the barn, (where nothing good ever happened.) I suppose that’s what they always count on, that you won’t be able to say anything. And what she couldn’t say then, she says to me now. She tells me. And I want to hold this little girl. Pick her up. Wipe away tears and replace them with promises. But she has already grown. She has already peaked only bangs above covers during sleepless nights. She has already learned to pocket the secret and dilute it with morning’s light. Learned to take care of her little sisters. No one else would watch them but her. She has already grown into a woman who carries her own children. Who carries me. 

Maybe there always comes a time when the lines become blurred. For mothers and daughters. Sisters. Friends. When we’re all just little hearted girls, trying to hold on, trying to let go, daring both. Trusting each other with tears and stories. 

I trusted my mother. And she trusted me. It would be easy for the story to end there, but it can’t. I won’t let it. Not for me. Nor you. Not for any little girl, no matter what her age. We must be the sisters who keep them safe. Tuck them in with stories of hope and joy, of kindness and progress and freedom and learning…so heads and hearts remain above covers — all night long, and all the days after. 

I wander in and out, around every barn. I am safe because of her. I reach out my hand, so you can feel the same. 

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My one day is every day.

We stood among the empty boxes in our first apartment. A mere quarter of our possessions from the house on Van Dyke Road easily filled the space. Standing silent, exhausted, knee deep in abandoned cardboard, it seemed as if the moment was calling us to either laugh or cry. I looked up to catch my mother’s eye, to find her lead. Packing tape still stuck to one elbow, she Vanna White-ed her arms across the brown mess and said, “One day, this will all be yours…” We burst into laughter.

And it was true! Is true! This ability to find joy in the moment, this knowledge that one way or another, we’re going to have to let it all go, emotionally, physically, spiritually… this is what she gave to me.

It was a special week for me. I sold a painting and I gave one away. Joy requires no measurement. Both were different experiences, but completely filled my heart!

She’s still the first person I want to call, my mom, amid the joy. But somehow I believe she knows. She’s standing by as I pack the painting to be shipped. She’s holding my vulnerable heart as I spin the other for the big reveal. The gift that was given to me so long ago, bubbles to the surface, and all I can do is laugh.

I am loved. My one day is every day. I do have it all.

“Would it be easier for you if I went with you?”
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To keep our pink ladies dancing.

I used to imagine that the front stoop of my grandma’s house was only there for the family of Hollyhock dolls that grew on either side of the cement steps. I was only allowed to pick a few each season. She showed me how to pluck the flower from the stem, flip it upside down and push an unopened bud through the then top to make a head that rested above the pink flowing dress. And for the rest of the afternoon, this small gathering of elegant ladies danced outside the entrance reserved just for them.

I gave them the voices to compliment each other. “How lovely is your pink dress!” “And yours is beautiful!” I danced them together like my mother once did at the Lakeside Ballroom with her cousin Janet. And the music from the transistor radio scratched in and out as I adjusted the antenna in the summer breeze. The lessons of last summer were forgotten. I had no fear of the wilting dresses. I only played. And played, believing that all beauty on Rueben and Elsie’s farm would ever remain.

I wasn’t wrong. Yes, the flowered dresses lay almost flat by the end of the day, but decades and countries away, the beauty remains. Yesterday, in the French countryside, she showed me the one Hollyhock flower that somehow grew between the century old crack of the house entrance. I wasn’t surprised. I had enough French words to tell her of how I made the pink ladies on my grandma’s stoop. We both smiled and touched the rhythm of her little pink dress.

I wrote in a poem, “This year… let’s love like no lessons have already been learned…” Of course we have to grow and educate and evolve. But some “lessons,” like those that deal with lost love, disappointment, unreached expectations — to keep our pink ladies dancing, we have to let those go. The heart stoops must remain clear and ever hopeful.

Countless things grew on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. Again and again. And the beauty will ever remain. I wake to this morning sun, and keep on dreaming.

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WWED.

It was in the first aisle of Jerry’s Jack and Jill that I got a nose bleed. My grandma, hands already full with a sack of toasted marshmallows, told me to reach into her folded sleeve around her right elbow. Sure enough, there was a Kleenex. It wasn’t long before I needed another. “Check the other arm,” she said. I switched to the opposite side of the cart, reached into her folded left sleeve, and pulled out another. In aisle three, even after the bleeding had stopped and the marshmallows were nearly gone, I wanted to see how far this went — if Grandma Elsie was actually some sort of magician. “I think I need another one,” I said. “Check my right bra strap,” she said quite confidently. And just like a rabbit from a hat, I pulled out another Kleenex. 

And it was magic — the ease with which she could fix any situation. How I counted on it! I suppose we all did. But I never saw the weight of it — the things she carried. How lightly she skirted through the aisles. And certainly things had to bother her – she was a woman of this world, and no one escapes, but still she never weighed upon, but lifted up. 

I think about it now. Am I traveling lightly? What is it I’m choosing to carry? The solution, or the burden? I ponder, WWED? (What would Elsie do?) I smile, and I choose the lightness of magic, the lightness of joy, wearing my heart on my sleeve, and sometimes under my bra strap. 

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Promises kept.

It was clear to me that they wanted to come with, the lineup of baby dolls and stuffed animals on my bed. We had the conversation every summer morning, of where we would go. What we would do. They wouldn’t all fit in the basket of my banana seat bike. Perhaps it was the elephant, or the koala, maybe even Malinda who told me to take the old wagon. All in agreement, I dragged it from behind the garage to the front door. Had it ever been put away, as I’m sure my mom suggested, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so rusty. I hesitated to put down the blanket. It still smelled like the top of a baby’s head, or at least the plastic that made up Malinda’s. So I grabbed from the newspaper pile — previous editions of the Alexandria Echo Press. I left enough to clean the mirrors for Thursday’s chores. I spread them on the wagon. Then the blanket. Then each animal. Each baby doll. And we were off.

They never complained about the gravel road. And they were such good listeners. They believed me when I told them I would love them forever. As much as I believed it myself. 

I thought of them as I picked up the pine cones from our yard and put them in the rusty wheelbarrow. I am a lifetime and a country away, but never too far. As the wheelbarrow filled, I added the promises kept — they took up no space at all. And I smiled. Love. It’s what I hold on to. 

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From the front.

It was only the handle that stuck out of the back pocket of our jeans, but it was enough, this plastic curve of the comb, to tell everyone who we were. Enough to tell everyone we had seen the movies, read the magazines, understood about the proper hair style (for both boys and girls). 

My mom bought it for me at Peterson’s Drug. The light blue plastic was easily seen, but not too showy. The widely spaced teeth of the comb feathered my bangs perfectly, and inserted me smack dab in the middle of the hope that “I belong here too.” 

The level of things that would have connected us more deeply were reserved for secret poems written while lying beside the stereo — poems that only my mother and Casey Kasem understood and were privy to. 

It would take years for me to gain my voice. Find the courage to use it. It’s joyfully ironic, when I stopped thinking about belonging and concentrated more on becoming, only then did I gain both. I did belong. To myself and to this world. The heart that I wear on my sleeve is decisively more connective than any comb I wore in my back pocket.

We’re given the tools we need right from the start. It takes a lot of growing, a lot of courage to use them. But it is what connects us. This sharing. It’s so delightful when I offer up an experience, and then you share yours.  More delightful even than running together wildly down the halls of Jefferson Senior High! Today I see you! From the front! 

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