Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: book, books, library, word, john Steinbeck, Monterey, California, inspiration, mom, read, reading, seals, travel, coast, coastline


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Fundamental.

The thing was, you had to be a reader to even understand the advertisement. A book was always within arms reach, so when it aired in between Saturday morning cartoons, promoting books, I rose up from my “head in elbowed arms” position and got a little closer to the television. “Reading is fundamental,” they said. I didn’t bother to ask my mother. I had been trained by Mrs. Bergstrom at Washington Elementary, and my mother repeated it daily, so I raced to the bookshelf to pull out the giant red dictionary to “Look it up.” I put my index finger in the section marking the “f”s. My finger traced through the pages as I sounded out the words. Fe, Fo, fun, funda, fundamental! Important, necessary, I was in agreement with it all. I ran to the laundry room. Saturday meant cartoons for me, and laundry for my mother. Her head bent over pulling clothes out of the dryer, I eagerly tapped her shoulder. “Reading is fundamental,” I said proudly. “It is,” she smiled, still filling her basket. I asked her about her next load, working fundamental into the conversation, remembering that to make a word your own, you had to use it three times. I often went to four or five, just to make sure. Satisfied that I had gained ownership, I went back to the tv. I saw my library book there. I turned off the set. Grabbed my book and went back to the laundry room. Nothing was more necessary, nor more important than she was. “I better read to you,” I said. She smiled and listened. We both leaned against the rumble of the washer, gathered in the greatest importance. Together. 

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Serifed.

Perhaps panic is too strong of a word, but I am unsettled when hovering between reads. It took three days of sampling between my last book and the one I’m currently reading. Three days and three nights. Three nights of wanting to get into the next one, but stumbling over the words. Feeling like the story was all jumbled, or even worse, not there at all. No connections. Nothing serifing to my heart. 

It was the same concern I had starting in the first grade, when we were allowed to check out books from the Washington Elementary library. We were allotted approximately ten minutes to pick our choice of the week. Ten minutes. I spent longer in my discussion with my mother each night about how that wasn’t enough time for such an important decision. I showed her the whole production — of how most of the class just walked up to the shelf. I opened the cupboard door as I was explaining and picked out a box of minute rice, or paprika, and shook it in my spaghetti arm to explain how they just blindly picked anything. Anything! Without a care in the world — I had heard that phrase on the party line at my grandma’s house. But I did care. And my mother knew it. So she didn’t argue. She just shook her head in agreement. Clutched her imaginary pearls, and I did the same. We both loved books. No further explanation was needed. “In your time,” she said, “and if you need more, you ask for it.” So I did. And it was given. During recess. Lunch hour. I was given the freedom to peruse. To let it remain important. What a gift!

And I suppose that’s why it never reaches a panic now. I remember — it’s only because it’s important. And I still have the luxury to feel it. To believe it. I am wandering today in the 1500s of Italy, in Maggie O’Farrell’s “A Marriage Portrait.” My mind safely adrift here in France, all made possible by my access to the Washington Elementary library. Hooked, connected, serifed by heart, I live in the word, all in my time. 

Do I paint my own bookmarks? Of course!
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In the word.

We went in search of seals along the coastline of Monterey, California, but instead I found myself back at the kitchen table of our house on Van Dyke Road. 

I was just a tween when I read it, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I loved to read. I had been reading for years. First just moving my eyes along with my mother’s words. Then sounding them out by myself by lamp light. (I never had to hide under covers, my mother encouraged me to read.) But this was the first book, my first adult feeling book, my first read that made me climb the stairs from my bedroom, taking them two at a time because of the urgency to discuss this marvelous book with my mother. She smiled as she wiped the orange countertop with a dishrag. She knew the feeling. She was a voracious reader herself. She let me go on and on, not unlike Lenny I suppose, about each word. Each page. Each rabbit. My life has never been the same.

That conversation remained throughout her life. We would call each other after every book. From city to city. Country to country. The words kept us connected. She wrote notes on sticky pads. I wrote thoughts on my iPad. We gathered in between. 

We didn’t see the seals yesterday, but the romance of this coastline went deep. John Steinbeck helped for sure, but it was my mother that aided most in the authoring of my soul. 

We are given what we need, I suppose, when we need it. In the absence of seals, I visited my home.

You are part of my story, and it is beautiful.
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