Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: children


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Hand held possibilities.

I don’t know that I was necessarily being so “good,” but that’s how it was interpreted. My grandma used to marvel — “I could just put you down, and that’s where you’d stay until I told you that you could move again — such a good kid!” 

I remember her roll-top desk. She plopped me in the chair. I could just reach the handle. It made a little thwapping sound as I pushed it up and then back down. I thought it was the greatest thing, riding this wave, the greatest thing that is until I caught a glimpse of what was inside. Pens and paper and my favorite, the pencil. I loved pencils from the moment I discovered them. The smell of the lead. The feel between my chubby fingers. The newness. Everything was just waiting to be created. I don’t know how long I held the pencil before she noticed me, rubbing it between my fingers as if to will the genie from the bottle, but she wiped her dish soaked hands against her apron and reached the scrap paper from the top shelf.

Tiny squares of white. Some blank. Some with abandoned grocery lists. I covered them all. Scribbles and drawings and near words. I was in heaven. I could have stayed forever. Was I being good? I was being me. 

It should come as no surprise, whenever visiting a museum or landmark, my go-to souvenir is the pencil. I have a favorite — from the Pierre Soulages museum. The weight. The feel. Perfection. I use it in my sketchbooks. But truth be told, I often just hold it in my hand for a moment. And on those days when the world, the day, decides to plop me in an unfamiliar place, I hold on. I take comfort in all of these hand-held possibilities, and I smile, because I find myself saying, “I’m good.”  

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In my best Malinda.


My first sleepover was in a hospital in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. I was only six years old. They wouldn’t let my mom stay in the room with me that night. I was terrified. I was armed only with my Golden Book — The Little China Pig, and my first baby baby doll, so brand new she was yet to be named.  The nurse in white cap, white dress, white nylons and shoes entered the room. She wiped the tears of my mom’s goodbye and said, “I’m Malinda, what’s your baby’s name?” Still stunned from the thought of being alone, I repeated the name Malinda. “Just like me!” She beamed. It was as if she placed her smile onto my face, and connected us, brought me to safety. That’s why I remember my first doll’s name, because of kindness.

The scrubs in the French hospital were flowered pink and blue. The language buzzed around me as I lay on the gurney.  It’s not lost on my that my grasp of this language is not a lot more than I had in St. Cloud. And my comfort level was about the same. They wheeled her in next to me, this elderly woman — who was not much bigger than I was then. She was scared, and cried out a little when the man who had just blocked my arm was doing the same to her. In my best Malinda I turned and sent my smile to her. I saw it travel across the sterile room and land on her lips.  She smiled back. And we both were saved.

I don’t know her name, but I remember her face. I look at my braced hand and feel myself smiling, in my best Malinda. 

It takes so little to give each other the “everything is going to be ok.” I, who have been given so much, hope to pass it on to you. Take my “Malinda,” and pass it on.

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Nestled




It’s very rare.  Maybe only three times in the last 10 years.  We live in one of the sunniest places on the planet.  So when it happens, when the clouds disappear the entire mountain, the Sainte Victoire, it is extremely disorienting. My heart knows it’s there, but my eyes send a wobble to my knees.  

Growing up in Minnesota, the seasons were very clear. It didn’t take long. I’m not sure I completely understood in Kindergarten, but by the time I transitioned from first grade to second, I got it, the seasons would change. They would always be there, one waiting to lift out of the next. I probably worried when I was only five. That was my nature. I would have asked my grandpa in the field. Then ran to my grandma in her kitchen. Then nestled by my mother’s knee for final assurance that summer would come again. And it always did. 

Each day when I make my morning walk, when I see it, the mountain, I know the love will always be there. Strong. Sturdy. No cloud or change of season can take it away. Oh, I still look, not so much out of worry anymore, no, I still feel nestled…but just to feel it a little more, with heart over eyes I see it. Love remains. Ever.

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Reattaching apples.

I have no memory of the apples growing. Each year, they were just there. The branches seemed to go from bare to weighed in just the blink of an eye. And as quickly as the green apples appeared in my grandparents’ trees, we were tripping over them in the grass, loading sack after brown paper sack to give away. 

Maybe it’s the way of all living. It goes so quickly. We move from grand point to grand point, missing all the little things along the way. The how we got heres. The growths. 

I keep trying to think of her as a young woman — the journey of how Elsie became Grandma Elsie. She wasn’t always in that kitchen. In that yard with an upturned apron full of apples. She once had to have giggled with the girls behind the school. Cursed her parents and dreamed of boys. Imagined a life. A future. 

To know the exact details, I suppose, would be like trying to reattach the apples to the tree. But I think it’s enough to know there was more. There is more. So much more to all of us. There are reasons and seasons of how we got here. And maybe we’ll never know all of it, but I think there is empathy in the attempt. Compassion in trying to imagine the whole picture. None of us are just one thing. Maybe in learning that, we come to see some growth after all.

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My heart’s pastels.

Long before I knew the months and numbers of the year, I could tell the changing of time by color. At the arrival of pastels, I knew my birthday was soon to follow. With each wink of pink and pop of yellow, I got more excited. Sure, I knew about Easter. I knew it was for everyone. But there was a little part of me, with each jellybean siting, each baby chick and colored egg that graced the storefronts, that took it as a sign, just for me. 

I didn’t have the words for it then, but I was learning there is a grand difference between selfishness and self care. 

Whether my birthday came before or after Easter, my mom always gave me a little plush duck. I named the first one Selma, and each one after. With baskets of candy all around, I held her yellow in my chubby hands and asked, “Is she just for me?” Yes, my mother said. And every year, I always asked, and I even when I had come to know the answer, believe the answer, it was still nice to hear the yes.

We are not alone. We have the privilege and the responsibility to care for others. But there is nothing wrong, with each sun that rises, to reach up your hands and hold a little bit of the day’s yellow, just for you. I carry the pocket of pastels in my heart, and it always answers yes. 

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Beyond the tracks.

It was exactly one mile from our house on Van Dyke Road to the railroad tracks just before town. When I was 6 years old, I was allowed that far on my own. I walked it, or biked it, every day of summer vacation. The first thing in sight, besides the large Viking statue, was our local museum. Truth be told, I wasn’t that interested in the Runestone. My sunburned cheeks, along with the pink part in my blonde hair, marked a head that was sufficiently filled with everything Washington Elementary had to offer, so I wasn’t hungry for the town’s history.

I earned a quarter each Thursday for cleaning the mirrors and vacuuming. With know stores in my one mile excursions, my collection of pocketed quarters was building, burning like the summer sun. I twirled them in my sweaty fingers at the edge of the tracks. I could see the sign for the gift shop. It was just a few steps more. I made lines in the dirt with the tips of my bumper tennis shoes. Surely a few more steps wouldn’t matter. I was going to be in the first grade in only a month. Please, please, please, I begged my mother when she returned home from work. “I just want to go to the gift shop. It’s only a few more steps.” “You don’t even know what’s inside,” she said. Which was true, but I had quarters, and I knew what the word gift meant. “It’s not toys,” she continued. I said something about needing it, wanting it… I’m sure I through in a “everyone else gets to” — even though I never saw children racing toward it. By the next Thursday, I had worn her down and she agreed with a “fine, go ahead.”

The first few steps beyond the tracks felt like I was floating. Maybe all freedom feels this light. I skipped the air to the front door and waited. And waited. I didn’t have a watch. So far I had only learned digital time. I sat twirling the quarters through my fingers. I jumped up with the click of the door. Open — the word felt just for me. I sprang through the door. Still sun blind, I couldn’t see anything on the shelves. It wasn’t what I expected, it was even better. I wandered slowly past the woman seated by the counter, so she could see me seeing. Someone should witness my first outing, I thought, and it was going to be her. She looked up from her paper, not nearly grasping the importance of this moment. And then I saw her. This little Native American doll. (I’m sure I still called her an Indian at the time, but we wouldn’t learn that for a few years.) She had the shiniest black hair. A little leather dress. I wanted her. I needed her. She was glorious. Two dollars. I had eight quarters. It was my miracle of freedom. I placed her on the counter along with my quarters. “That’ll be $2.08,” she said. I smiled, still not realizing, pushing my quarters closer.” “$2.08,” she repeated. “But it says, two dollars. I have two dollars. I Windexed for two months.” (Which wasn’t really true, we only bought off brands, but she didn’t need to know that.) “It’s the tax,” she said. Tax? I didn’t know anything about tax. “You can take from the penny jar,” she said. There were four pennies left on the side of the counter. I was still short. I looked at the doll. I looked at the counter. I looked at the woman. She took the doll and turned around. My heart sank. Gutted, I began to turn toward the door. She placed the sacked doll on the counter along with her purse. She pulled out her coin purse and added four pennies to the cash register. My heart floated again. She handed me the doll. She had seen me after all.

This was our town, I thought. I belonged here. On both sides of the tracks. I smiled in the knowledge. I had so much to learn, but for one brief shining summer moment, I knew everything I needed to know.

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Morning heals.

The first time driving into Houston I was still in my teens. My mom and I were going to see her sister Kay. The approach to the city is a cluster of freeways. I wasn’t yet sure if the rumors were true, but certainly the cars were bigger, mostly being trucks, and they were fast! I sped to keep within the blur of the car in front of me, and out of the one behind me.

The time between then and now feels almost as quick. The memories whir in multiple lanes.

Yesterday I was at the wheel again. This time my husband beside me. We got caught up in the medical district. So many hospitals. One beside the other. Each bigger than the next. I weaved my way through the care, both urgent and long, while Dominique searched for a hotel on his iPad. I could see him swiping out of the corner of my eye. “They’re so expensive,” he said.

I wasn’t surprised. This I had known from being a teenager as well. Being a teenager always in the hospital. My mother by my side until visiting hours were over. Having to drive in the dark. No directions, internal or external. No GPS. No phones. Having to drive beyond the security and nearness that only money could buy. She drove to what we could afford.

Anesthesia wearing off, worry setting in, I had no way to know if she made it. If she dared to close her eyes. Dared the comfort of sleep. Miles apart. Still. Quiet. We waited for morning’s heal.

Time has blurred so much, but not the love. Not the love that I felt as my hospital door opened and my mother’s smiling face entered. What she did for me. Still does.

It’s not a spoiler to say that we made it. Then and now.

Life moves pretty fast. Somehow, slowly, thoughtfully, joyfully, we save each other along the way.

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If it’s the beaches…

Waking up to the clank of cousins eating cereal from the variety packs grandma bought, I ran down the stairs to the kitchen. There was no need to change from pajamas. Summer shorts and t-shirts were the pajamas we wore straight into the day, and back into the night. Even though we believed our summers would never end, this did save valuable time.

Maybe it was because of the example my grandpa set — he went out to work no matter the weather — or maybe it was our springing youth, but we never asked what it was like outside. Never questioned if we should go. It was expected, from them and us. We wanted to. If it was sunny, we ran until the sweat drained from our t-shirts. In the rain we hopped from barn to coop.

Wearing my smallest pair of bumper tennis shoes from Iverson’s in town, I asked my grandma during a rootbeer break if she was having a good day. “Of course,” she said, “I already decided.” I raised my eyes and shook my head in agreement. So it was like that, I thought. Just decide. I wiped my rootbeer mustache with my shoulder, and went back out into my decision — it was a good day.

The landscape keeps changing as we drive the country. This morning we wake to the white sand beaches. If it’s the beaches, I think, it’s going to be a good day, I already decided.

Once again, heaven nods.

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Diorama.

.

From the moment she introduced the assignment to the class, I had a plan. It wouldn’t be hard to find a shoe box to make the diorama. My mom loved shoes. She had a closet full of them.

Mrs. Bergstrom told us that we were going to make a “slice of life” — capture a miniature moment. We could do anything. She suggested scissors and cardboard and paint and crayons. Glue of course, Elmer’s. My head was spinning. Oh, how I loved to make things.

There was an hour after I got off the bus before my mom got home from work. I could have waited. I should have waited. But my seven year old self whispered, then shouted, “Don’t wait!” I opened my mother’s closet and took out the first box in reach. I took out the shiny shoes neatly resting head to toe in tissue paper. I’d like to think There was a moment I think, I hope, that I thought of keeping them wrapped in the tissue paper, but then that shouting self said it might be useful for my diorama — “If you colored it blue and crinkled it up, glued it to the box, it could be one of our 10,000 lakes.” The shoes were left naked on the floor.

I was knee deep, literally, in cuts and folds and colors by the time my mom got home. I was all smiles when I looked up at her from her bedroom floor. Holding the cut-out of myself.

She didn’t return a look of delight like I was expecting. No, it was a look I had never seen before. Deflation. I had been so busy trying to create my own slice, that I forgot about hers.

“It’s my slice of life…” I said sheepishly. She nodded. “And also mine,” she added. She helped me pick up the mess. Put it all on the kitchen table. She wasn’t mad. She even helped me finish. But I knew at that moment, it wasn’t all about me. I took special care to add lovely shoes to the figure that represented her in my tiny box. We were in this together.

I painted a bookmark yesterday of Maya Angelou. At the top are her words, “Then when you know better, do better.” It’s a good reminder for me. It’s simple, but so worth repeating. We are not alone in this life. We would do well to remember as we wander through each other’s dioramas. The word itself in French means, “through that which is seen.” My mother saw me. And I saw her. And oh, how she she made me, still makes me, want to do better.

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Present.

The way they warned us, the teachers at Washington Elementary, trouble seemed to be a place, a spot. “Don’t get into trouble,” they said. The only “trouble” I was having was figuring out where this place was exactly. Because when the teacher said, “Now Steven is in trouble,” he seemed to still be right there, sitting beside us. Hadn’t he said “present,” when she called out his name? Why couldn’t I understand? How come I couldn’t see it? Maybe trouble was invisible, I thought.

It sounds funny, I suppose, but it turns out, I wasn’t all that wrong. We never know what people are going through. We see the outsides so easily, but that’s usually not the whole story. To see the real story, we need to actually be present. It’s not enough to just call it out. We have to be there. Show up. Again and Again. And ask questions when we don’t understand. Listen. Raise our hands. Reach out. Find a way to connect. See with our hearts what our eyes cannot. Make all around us visible. 

And if you saw that I am not just my face, but all that I have faced, and if I did that for you…

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