Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: christmas


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I do have a river.

I don’t know how many times I sang the song, “I wish I had a river…” Joni Mitchell was a staple in our house, so when it was “coming on Christmas,” she was on repeat. How many wishes did I make for that river, a river so long that I could skate away on, before I even knew what it would mean? 

It wasn’t a river where I learned to skate. In fact it was a pond. Noonan’s Pond. And by “learned” I mean, fell and broke my arm. (Maybe that’s where all lessons are learned, in the falling.) All of my summers were spent attempting to fly. From diving boards to bicycle wheels, I was certain that my feet could leave the ground. It was no different with the change in weather. When the lakes ponds and froze over, I was certain, it was simply another way to take flight. 

I wore my full plastered arm, like a badge of courage.  Every fifth grader celebrated the attempt. All knowing, valuing, what that breeze felt like underfoot. 

The needles are already falling from our tree on this sacred eve. But it’s ok. I learned it long ago on the ice. I learn it daily, simply loving. All the rivers to cross. There will be so many stumbles and falls, and letting ins and letting gos…all breezes under our hearts, under our feet, this love teaches us daily, how to fly.

Merry Christmas. 

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Seeing the gift.


I never asked for toys. My friends had every page of the Sears Christmas catalog marked. It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to make something. Something I could paint. Something I could form, or mold, or color. Because I saw it as an extension. When they opened their gifts — their plastic toys — the excitement was there for a minute, but it seemed to end. For me, to get the gift of creation, it was like I got to open a new gift every day. It kept giving and giving.

Thumbing through my photos this morning, all the lights of Christmas were shining. And for just a brief second, my heart felt a little melancholy. It’s all so fast. How do we keep those lights burning? I reached into my suitcase for the answer. A gift I received. A beautiful leather bound book of ancient paper. Ready. Waiting. Just for me to create. I touch it. Feel the possibility. The endless hours to come. The love in the gift that says “I know you.” Once again I am five years old, beginning, warmed by the light of it all.

I suppose we’re all given that gift, daily. The day opens and we get to decide what we’re going to make of it.

Let me always see the gift. Ever be part of the giving.

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An Amazing Peace.

I read it every year — Maya Angelou’s An Amazing Peace. It is the manger of my Christmas decor. I don’t remember each word by heart, but the feeling, oh, the feeling that these words create — of understanding, of trial, of joy, of hope…and peace, well, they are permanently engraved in my heart. And those feelings latch on to memory and time. Of what was, what is, and what could be. And I live there, coddled in every word. Piece by piece. Peace by peace. 

This is the first year that I don’t have the book beside me. It rests seven hours ahead in another country. But I am not without it. “I am not without.” I say the words slowly, truly, and perhaps learn the meaning of Christmas once more. 

Isn’t it the same with love? It may not sit beside us. But we are never without. This is my truest peace. I hope you can feel it — on this joyous of days — ever.

Merry Christmas, everyone. It is amazing.

“ Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.” Maya Angelou


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I’m no fool.



Before Walt Disney made him into a character, the phrase Jiminy Cricket was used as an exclamation of surprise. Of course I didn’t know it at the time, but I felt it — every time he sang us into the school movie, “I’m no fool…” he warbled, and we all, seated anxiously at our desks awaiting movie day, exclaimed under breath, “Jiminy Crickit!”

We were all hovering in uncertainty and hope in Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade class. The snow had begun to pile up outside. Just days before Christmas vacation. Gerald Reed, the tallest boy in class, pulled down the long black shades. The movie monitor, an elected position, wheeled in the projector as we fidgeted in our seats. The click of the reel began. Jiminy Crickit sang us in, and the movie about the real Santa Claus, the true Saint Nicholas, began. A living Santa Claus, giving gifts. So he was real! All doubts instilled by older siblings and the high ranking fifth graders of Washington elementary were gone. Santa Claus did exist. Other than learning how to spell, this may have been the greatest gift Mrs. Bergstrom ever gave us — this one more year of believing.

As we drove the streets of the city last night, the lights were magnificent. One block outlit the other. Nothing but shiny hope. “Jiminy Crickit!!!” I said as we made our ways through the illumination.

Everyone in the house is asleep. Presents are unopened, but for one… I give myself the gift, once again — one more year of believing.


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Wander-welcomed.


Where your heart can rest, and your mind can wander, I guess that’s home.

We pulled into the town. I felt no connection. That feeling when you know you’re lonesome, but you just can’t pinpoint for what. We drove the Main Street. How could there be no parking spaces and yet nothing to park for? We turned on 10th per Google’s direction for coffee. It must have closed. Try ninth, she suggested. Driving slowly I saw the coffee shop, next to a bookstore. Yes!

The first sip was the familiar road. Entering the bookstore, well, that was home.Nestled in all those words, I was wander-welcomed. It’s a rare combination, this feeling of calm and excitement. This feeling that anything could be true, could be real, even the story of yourself.

I don’t have a physical place to go to, in the sense that some would call home. Not my grandparents’, nor my mother’s house. But I have something else. I have the stories they gave to me. I can take them anywhere. Everywhere.

Recently I found a note, a birthday card, tucked into one of my mom’s books. It was from her mother. I don’t know for which birthday. It would have been true any year. She wrote of what a lovely daughter she was and how she made the world a better place. These words are the open doors to my forever. My safe. My possible.

I’m the lucky one. I can walk into this unfamiliar bookstore, in this unfamiliar town, and be gathered in. Sensing the stories I carry, the words that rest on shelf and table say, “Come in, you and your heart sit down.” I do. We do. We all are home. Indeed, a better place.

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Tagged.

There was a gift wrapping room in our last hotel. Everything but the presents themselves. Expensive colored papers and ribboned bows. Scotch tape. Scissors sharpened new. Candies — chocolated and caned. I wrapped our purchases while the carols played. Tagged each one by name.

I suppose that’s always been the most important part — the tagging. At first, as a child, it was to see your name on top. The “to.” Oh how glorious to be beside the “to.” What would I get? What could I claim? It seemed to be everything. I would have never imagined it differently. And I can’t tell you the exact date it happened, or even the time of year. But it did change. Without my knowledge or permission, it became glorious to see (feel) my name on the “from.” To be the giver. Just a simple tag, but oh, the power it held.

It’s always been love, I guess. On both sides of the tag.

It was no where near Christmas when I found them – this bundled string of tags. Weathered through years of neglect, I pulled them from a forgotten corner of my studio. I have no idea what the previous owners were going to give, but surely it had something to do with love, so I saved them. In the summer sun, I dusted them off, and began writing all of the gifts that I want to give. The gifts that I want to receive. (We need to be able to do both.)

We won’t be at our house in France for Christmas, but I have a strong feeling we will be home. My gifts have been tagged. My heart as well. I carry them with me.

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The season.

When I moved to France, I left behind my Christmas decorations, but certainly not my Christmas spirit.

The first thing in my new collection was a cardinal that I painted. A female cardinal. A symbol for me in so many ways. A visit from those who had passed on. A vision of hope. Not to mention my high school mascot. A winged collection of all that I am. All that I can be.

And never was it more true. I carried it all with me. Hope won’t weigh you down. Nothing is lighter, except perhaps joy.

I have added to my collection through the years, but it’s these wings that begin my celebration of the season. Long before Thanksgiving. They can’t be contained by calendar or country.

I’m writing to you today from Paris. But no different than yesterday from Aix en Provence. I am just here. With you. And what a comfort that is. Knowing it, I can believe my mom sits beside me, planning her outfits and sipping her latte. My grandma fills her purse with extra snacks. My grandpa perches his pipe between silent lips. My husband smiles at me, knowing our table is always full.

I don’t need the Starbuck’s cup to tell me that it’s Christmas. My heart and wings already know.


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Now.

I suppose it was at the beginning of each school year that I began waiting for Christmas. Ticking off the markers. The autumn sports on fields or in bleachers. The Halloween candy counted, saved, stretched until Thanksgiving. The first snowfall. Cars and snowballs pushed through the white, making tracks to Christmas. The forever that it seemed to take, now looks like a blur. Maybe my head rested in waitful agony during the math class that explained “time plus time equals speed” — but it’s oh, so clear now. 

It seems too many of us have missed the lessons. 

Today, all I want is candy corn, and for time to slow down. If I found such a sack of delicious treats, I would pull them out kernel by kernel. I would eat the white tip. Then the orange, then the sweet yellow. The yellow is my favorite of all. You will never be able to convince me that each color tastes the same. Not for me. But if I found this sweet candy, I wouldn’t rush the yellow. I would give thanks for the white. Praise the vibrant orange. And pause, twirling the golden tip in my fingers. Sweet yellow. As sweet as Christmas morning. Time held in my hand.

I’m learning the lessons. Still and again. Trying to enjoy the minutes. The hours. The day. Not waiting for “someday”. Our “someday” is now.

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True colors.

It’s odd to think of Christmas in this French summer heat, but there it was, along my daily gravel path. The color of the wild flowers against the sea of green — the same combination my friend Deb used for her Christmas decorations. 

Lounging in our chairs at the Starbuck’s near my apartment, drinking extra-hot vanilla lattes in the still-welcomed air conditioning of the lingering September summer, we thumbed through the Jonathan Adler catalog, already dreaming of Christmas. We could never start too early. We both loved decorating for the holidays. It was here, eleven years ago, that she changed her color palette. And a bold palette it was. More pink than red. More yellow than green, but still a nod to the tradition. Each holiday piece that she put out was in this new palette. Right down to the candy purchased in Stillwater, Minnesota. 

With French pebbles still in the soles of my shoes, I stepped directly into her apartment. The familiar scent of candles. The corner tree blinking. Shelled pistachios next to chocolate covered in a deep pink candy shell. (Ever in the palette.) And just like with the catalog, we went through her apartment and pointed out, praised, loved each and every detail. 

If you think this all shallow, you would be wrong. Because I knew what this break from the traditional palette meant. I knew what not fitting into the norm of it all felt like for her, for me, (for so many). I knew the pain she had suffered losing her husband first to mental illness, then divorce. The jobs she had lost. The lifestyle she tried to regain. The navigating of keeping tradition for her son, creating a new life for herself. I knew her colors, inside and out. She was my friend.

And isn’t it just like a friend to show up with a wink and smile, lifting your heart and heat weary feet on a gravel path. I suppose that’s what real friends do, at any time, any distance, they show you their true colors, and allow you to walk in  yours. 

If you see a spring in my step, you know I had such a friend.

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Dampened straw.

I wrote it years ago — Careless with my Christmas. A story about how I just didn’t fit into the Norman Rockwell painting of it all. So I stopped trying — not giving up on Christmas, but letting go of the idea of what it was “supposed to look like” — I stopped trying to paint myself into someone else’s picture and start living in my own. Maybe we all do that – try to fit into some impossible, and inevitably disappointing version of the “perfect Christmas.” That perfect version only happened once, and to be honest, it wasn’t even all that perfect — it included rejection and wandering and acceptance, and and hope and love, rugged ground, and straw — but that was the real beauty, I suppose, the grace that lay in all those imperfections.

I made a promise to myself, those many years ago, that I wouldn’t waste another Christmas, trying to make it perfect. I looked into the manger of my heart and promised I would take care, appreciate, and never let another slip away. We’re not given that many.

I’m not saying it has been easy. Last night, the first Christmas Eve without my mom, I fought those tears of tenderness all evening. And then, I couldn’t. We opened up our Christmas fortune cookies (I told you I had gladly given up on the “normal.”) The print was way too small. Margaux read it aloud in French, and then English — “When two hearts are connected no distance is too far.” I guess it wasn’t chance that I received that message. I let the tears flow. And it was OK. It was good to feel it.

I wasn’t careless with the tears. I let them fall gently. Held them in my hands. Dabbed the lines. And took the dampened straw of my heart back down to the lit tree where we opened presents. And hugged. And smiled. And loved.

Today, we will do it again. And it will be different. Possibly even difficult at moments, but it will be beautiful.

Take care of your heart. Take care of each other. Take care of this perfectly imperfect, Christmas Day.