Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: dreams


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The dress designer.

I’m not sure where heaven begins. How high up it actually is… but when I saw the mannequins on the fifth floor of this New York walk up in the fashion district, I thought perhaps, for my mother, it starts right here. 

You could say she loved clothes, but that’s not the complete story. She loved fashion. What’s the difference? I would equate it to the comparison of house and home. Fashion is about the design. The putting together. Accessorizing. For her it was not about what she was wearing, but how she wore it. 

Certainly no one mistook it for the promised land —  the Woolworth’s on Broadway in Alexandria, Minnesota — but when I watched her thumbing through the Butterick patterns, or the McCall’s, on Saturday mornings, when I watched the dream come alive as she swooped her hands from waist to knees, stretched her arms out in the make believe dress, for me I was certain I was in the presence of an angel. 

It had always been her dream to be a dress designer. I imagine her now, so easily she bypasses the stairs and floats her way to the upper floor. How joyfully she passes on her heart and knowledge to the young people amid the mannequins awaiting. How she drapes and flows. So elegant. So possible. And they can feel it. Beyond their pin pricked fingers and weary eyes, they are Woolworthed into her sense of magic. And it’s Saturday morning, every day. And they dare to dream because of her. Just like me. 

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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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Why not Milwaukee?

It was the first thing I noticed about the sitcom, Laverne and Shirley. “She makes her cursive “L”s just like you!” I told my mom. Laverne wore her loopy “L” on all of her clothing, not that far from where my mom and I wore our hearts on our sleeves — always looking for something, someone, to connect.

I haven’t thought about them for years, these two fictional bottle cappers from Wisconsin, but then I had the dream. It was just a couple of nights ago. My grandma was the first to bring it up. She said, “I’m going to go with her to Milwaukee. I want to be together.” I looked at my mom. She explained that she had to go to Milwaukee. No one asked why, we just seemed to know. “I’m going to come too,” I said. (I have always been a come-with gal.) They both smiled, knowing we would indeed be together, no matter what, no matter where. Because heaven could be anyplace, why not here?

I saw the yellow sticky note this morning in my mother’s handwriting. The red loop of the “L” beat against my sleeve. My heart is full. I am dressed in the ones I love.

“On your mark, get set, and go now, got a dream and we just know now, we’re gonna make our dream come true. And we’ll do it our way, yes our way! Make all our dreams come true, for me and you!”

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