Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: comfort


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The weight of a letter.

I bought it at an antique store in Hopkins, Minnesota and carried it back to France with me. You know it’s valuable when I allow it space in my ever overpacked suitcase. 

It’s from a time when people still wrote letters. When desk objects were given beauty along with function. On the right is a tiny scale for the weight of the words, and the left a circular housing for the precious stamps that carry them. Of course I don’t need the scale. I have a pretty good idea of the weight of the words. At least I hope the receiver knows — knows that I could have just sent a text, an email, but instead thumbed through all of my cards, along with the thoughts of this person, picked out the one that fit the situation, borrowed my husband’s best pen, wrote in cursive (like nobody’s taught anymore), signed it, meant it, sealed it with wax, and walked it to the post office. And isn’t it just as important that I know? 

My little antique scale can’t weigh all that, but it does remind me to keep doing it. Yes, I have an Apple Pencil, an iPad. I love modern technology. It is connecting us today. But I keep reminders around me — that there is more. The more of photographs printed. Books with spines. Jams without preservatives. Art with actual signatures. And I make the connections with heart and hand. And the joy that it brings, that I carry so easily, daily, makes me smile, because it actually weighs nothing at all. 

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Note to self.

There is a trend of writing letters to your younger self. And I must admit I’ve given it a little thought, but as I remember back to my first class on perspective  — how the assignment was to draw the hallway in your house — and I thought, how nice, the teacher actually thinks I live in a house… I went home, (because you can have a home that isn’t a house), sat in the apartment kitchen where you couldn’t drink the tap water, looked through the living room and drew the small space between my mother’s bedroom and mine, completely in reverse perspective. I mention it because it occurs to me that this younger self already knew she saw things differently. So it probably won’t come as a surprise that I do the opposite now — it is she writing to me, daily. Each one starts off the same, “Dude…” (she calls me dude, because she was cool like that, and because I know it’s as harsh as she going to get…) “Dude,” she says, “you’ve already learned this…” “But I’m doing it all wrong — backwards,” I tell her. And she replies, a little more gently this time, in my mother’s voice, (because she, my mom, was kind like that) with the same thing my mother said to me when I brought home my incomplete assignment on perspective. I told my mom, “I did the whole thing backwards,” hanging my head. She pulled up my chin and said, “Great!” “Great?????” I questioned. “Sure,” she said, “you’re Ginger Rogers!” I smiled. I was learning perspective after all. 

There will be a mountain of things I have to relearn today, and again tomorrow, but in this moment, l look around, offer up a little kindness, and this dude begins to dance. 

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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 tender fields

I only had to hear it once for it to stick. “There are no stupid questions,” Mrs. Strand said, addressing the thirty strained-necked five year olds looking up from their cross legged positions at Washington Elementary. So the questioning began.

Behind our house on VanDyke Road, there was a field of grain. Hugo’s field. Lined from green to gold every summer. My grandpa had the same, but he also had a field for the cows. Unlike the fields of grain, it was fenced and trampled — “But still a field?” I asked my grandpa. “Yes, he said. “But what will grow?” “The cows,” he said. I shook my head in agreement.

I was surprised the first time my mother dropped me off at the field to play softball. This was a field too? This sanded and based lot. The teenage boy who we loosely called coach said he would teach of the basics – hitting and fielding. Fielding? No one else raised their hands. Why wasn’t anyone else questioning all these forms of field. I put down my hand and began to play.

It wasn’t lost on me that when you were asked to choose your line of work, it was your field. And when you became good at your chosen profession, you were “outstanding in your field.” The first time I heard this, probably because of Mrs. Strand, Hugo, because of Grandpa, because of the teenage boy, I heard, “out standing in your field.” I still think of it that way. Because this is where I go to create, to the tender fields that led me here. And they were tender. Even through every cracked bit of earth, with every run and trample, I learned. When yields were low. I learned. Each season, I grew. Never with a guarantee, but always a promise of hope. It is with this welcoming of wonder, I wander today’s field.

Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.

Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.


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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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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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On with the lesson.

He sat next to me in kindergarten, where our only source of hierarchy came from the size of our Crayola crayons box. My mom couldn’t afford the largest, but I did have a good solid 24 pack. A few in class had the coveted 64 with the sharpener included, but not many. He pulled his tiny 9 pack from inside of his desk. He barely made a scribble during the allotted coloring time. At first I thought it was because he didn’t have that much to choose from, so I offered to share. He declined. And he didn’t seem embarrassed, he just didn’t seem to care. This was most surprising! It was my favorite time of day. To be set free. To color. To create. Then hang it on the wall! Wow!  His lack of enthusiasm was doubled down with the use of only the color brown. And I must admit that there was probably some judgement in my second offer of crayon sharing, more of a “Are you sure you don’t want to try some of my crayons?” He shrugged them away. 

One day he was called out of class for a few tests. We all whispered in wonder. Well, not wonder really, but confirmation that he must indeed be stupid, like we thought. He came back to the classroom all smiles. He was colorblind. We all welcomed the diagnosis. Mrs. Strand hung his brown paper on the wall, and we went on with the lesson. 

It’s hard to see things the way other people see them. And I am just as guilty. I ask again and again, how can they not see it???? I suppose sometimes it’s so clear that it’s invisible. I would like to think we have learned and grown since the age of five, but I’m not always so sure. 

Facing the same direction, I guess we will always see things differently. And we will rarely receive the reasons why. We will be asked again and again to get from desk to wall without diagnosis, but only pure understanding. We must sit in our differences and try to learn.

The sun comes up. We go on with the lesson. 

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Forever three.

In the arts of love and endurance, gratitude, forgiveness, strength and pure joy, the heart is mighty, for sure! But it’s never been all that good at math.

Of the nine children my grandparents had, only two remain. This two of Rueben and Elsie changed its numbers so many times, and continues still. Only once, with the twins, did it jump by two. The eleven held, and grew even more rapidly, as the nine paired off and tested all of our addition skills. Children turned into grands and then greats, and just as we got used to all of the plus signs, the painful subtractions began. 

But the arithmetic of the heart is nothing like we learned at Washington Elementary. Here they taught us that the value changed when subtracting. But they didn’t warn us about the heart. Because for the heart, it never does. The numbers will forever change — it’s a guarantee that life will do that — but the value remains. Love cannot, will not, do the math.

I mention it today because my dear friends lost their beloved dog. She said she was missing her family of three. I, we, struggle to add comfort in times of loss. I don’t know if it helps, I hope it helps, it often does for me…this letting go of the math. Letting the heart decide what remains. True love does. So, I tell her, you ARE still three. Forever three. 


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Still and again.


It was the most delightful combination of comfort and brand new. 

I made a book of photographs for Dominique’s mother. Each visit we would go through the book, again, for the first time. Her short term memory collapsed upon itself within just a few minutes, but the long term — the love of her family — this recognition remained until the end. So we turned, page by page, holding.

Maybe it’s the heart that takes over, when the brain has had enough. The brain that has warned us, urged us. Shot the warning signs again and again. But thankfully the heart seems to win — turning the the brain’s fears of “remember when…” into the heart’s gathering of “aaaah, but remember when…” 

They say memory is unreliable. I suppose if you’re using the brain, that’s true. So I write the stories from my heart, where they seem to be holding, strong. Each day turning the page, saying the “I love you’s” again, and for the first time.

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