Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: encouragement


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More ideas.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get there, but I usually do.

I’m no different from the next person when it comes to packing a suitcase, if that next person is slightly neurotic and overly excited. It’s still three weeks away, but the neurons in charge of organization have already begun counting underwear and creating a capsule wardrobe. “Wouldn’t it be great,” they urged, “if we had packing cubes, and other various sorting devices for the suitcases…” I nodded inside my own head and began searching the web. The options, while infinite, didn’t seem exactly right. I searched through sizes and colors and prices. The right price was the wrong country of origin. The right color was the wrong size. The right size was the wrong price. I searched and fumbled. Added some to cart. Backed out. Searched again. After about an hour and forty-five minutes, it became clear that I could use the random tote bags given free from the pharmacy and the stash of bags my mother gave to me from the make-up counter promotions. I take a breath. I take a pause. I have everything I need. What a relief to quit searching…unless that is, I need more clothes… That’s when I play fashion show from my own closet and once again realize, I have more than plenty.

I suppose it’s true with almost everything — we don’t need more things, we need more ideas. Of course there are specific times when you require a precise tool, object, (even scarf or scarves to match your autumn overcoat), but most of the time I find, if I’m creative enough, thoughtful enough, I already have the perfect solution. And it usually feels great! To shop your own closet and create a new look. To sand and sand the abandoned wood and make a new frame. To create a delicious recipe out of the left-overs. To give the neurons a break and let my heart and hands take over.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for commerce. I bought two new books yesterday. (I will use the french bag as backing for a framed picture, but still.) And I want you to buy pictures and books and cards, even from me (insert shameless plug here). So what was my point? I don’t know…maybe Marie Kondo had it right, about all the “sparking joy.” I like that. I think it’s a good idea…I guess that was the point, after all, more ideas — more joyful ideas! Wishing you a day filled with them.

Pause, and spark!

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Doing Better.

It’s no secret that I read a lot. Often they make the books into movies. Often I’m disappointed. For me, the words seem to paint a more realistic picture. A vivid representation of the person or people inside the story. Not tainted or swayed by the pressures of Hollywood. I wonder when we were first sold the idea that people, in order to be a hero, or heroine, had to “look the part.” I, I say with great fortune, have lived a life to the contrary. 

I have written about so many that have saved me through the years. Mr. Whitman, the caretaker of the cemetery, dirtied and slumped from the weight of burying the people from town. My grandfather, callused hand reaching behind his stained overalls to bring me along, bring me through. Chubbied Grandmother wiping kitchen hands on apron, just to give us something sweet. Wearied teachers, still finding a way to say the words that just might carry us. Tear-stained mother who laughed with unfaltering grace. 

So it came as a surprise to me, the woman in New York standing in front of my portrait of Maya Angelou — a sage I return to again and again. She read the words and seemed to be moved. She praised them. I thanked her. She wanted to buy copies, but whispering sheepishly now, “maybe without the picture.” Whispering even lower now, “you know, maybe she could be a bit polarizing to my customers.” 

I laughed. How ironically and completely opposite of the words that she claimed to love. 

Kindness. Truth. Beauty. Wisdom. Hope. Leadership. Strength. Love. It comes in all sorts of “packaging.” Each a gift. 

Maya would have forgiven her. As she always said, “When we know better, we do better.” I put the words and paintings before you, before myself, daily, in the hopes of doing just that… better.

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Something beautiful.

Certainly they had more money than we did, the women who owned BonJos — an upscale dress shop for the women of Alexandria, Minnesota. They probably had big houses. Nice cars. But when I saw my mom pull back the curtain and step out of the elevated dressing room at the Viking Plaza mall, I knew what class meant. And it was beautiful. 

This is not to say that others didn’t have it. People all around us did. At all levels. But what my mother taught me, standing tall above her height and pay grade, was that elegance, grace, true beauty, came from within. And she wore it better than anyone. 

And of course she aged. It happens to all of us. But what’s remarkable, I only ever saw that woman — that woman coming out from behind the curtain, daring the town and the mirror to really see her. That woman who never thought she was brave, but dared to extend her height with heels from Herberger’s. I saw her with smiling breath held. And it wasn’t just me, I saw the owners catch themselves in approval. BonJos was lit brighter than the fluorescent of any mall. 

Some will tell you that love is blind. I don’t agree. Maybe love is the only thing that truly sees. Maybe love is the reason even well into her 80’s this beauty remained. 

Here’s how I see it. I hope we all can see it this way — Youth will fade. Real beauty never does.

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Of wind and wave.

I suppose it’s impossible to find out right away. We make our friends, from the start, in the most joyous of times. We gravitate to the laughter on summer vacation beaches. Buoyed by the play. And between the giggles and the hands held in the sand that we skip upon, we shout to all the blue above, “This is my friend!!!!” And we can’t, for one second, imagine that the moment is not eternal. Until it isn’t.

Perhaps it is here where real friends are made. When the skies darken and the path can no longer be skipped, but only trudged. When the only sound that can break the noise of wind and wave is the close whisper of “I’m still here…and it’s still beautiful.” Maybe the skies can’t hear it then, and maybe they don’t need to, but my heart shouts with eternal joy, “This is my friend!”

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Building soul.

According to the song, we were not yet even “puppies,” but each morning around 8:15 — just after being dropped off of the school bus at Washington Elementary, and just before Miss Green began our 5th grade class — we sang alongside the turntable with Donny Osmond, “And they called it puppy love
Just because we’re in our teens…”

Of course we weren’t in our teens, but even just having a record player, we felt old enough to experience all the emotions. The closest we actually got to boys was playing four square on the playground. We rotated through the boxes, never touching, hovering somewhere between wanting to beat them and wanting to be liked. I suppose we thought the answers would come in the next song. But none of us actually had the money to buy a new 45 at Carlson’s Music Center, so we sang it again and again, “

Someone, help me, help me, help me please. Is the answer up above? How can I, oh how can I tell them,this is not a puppy love.”We began to lean on Mr. Iverson, our music teacher. Each week he gathered us together to learn a new song — new meaning new to us, but certainly old, perhaps older than our parents. We were desperate for new. “Please please please,” we begged, “let us sing something from the radio.” Our hands shot up straight in the air when he asked for suggestions. “Seasons in the sun” was the overwhelming response. They played it constantly on KDWB, the radio station that intermittantly came in from Minneapolis. Unfamiliar with the lyrics, he said he would play the record and decide. He placed it on the turntable and immediatlely his face turned. None of us had heard the actual verses. We were all just mesmorized by the chorus — “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun…” Unfortunately, the majority of the song was about dying. Somehow we had missed that. He scratched the record racing to get the needle out of the groove. I guess we were all in such a hurry to become older, at least puppies, that we missed it.

And that’s the gift, isn’t it? I’m always surprised as summer turns into fall. It happens year after year, and I’m still hovering between the bus ride and when class actually begins. Luxuriating in the 15 minutes of unsupervised freedom. Still ready to believe. To become. To begin again.

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Of all things important.

Until yesterday, I had only ever heard my grandfather use the term “…and stuff.” I was listening to a podcast and this man was explaining how he got his job distributing vacation brochures at the rest stop. “Well,” he said, “the guy who had the job before me got sick and stuff…” He continued, “He got the diabetes and stuff… and then he passed away and stuff…”

As I mentioned, my grandfather used the term quite frequently, but certainly not for the important things. He would have never “and stuff”-ed someone’s death.

He was a man of few words. He didn’t suffer fools. He said the things that needed to be said, and that was it. I think he used the term “and stuff,” not to be rude, but just to end the conversation already and get back to the things he deemed truly important.

I stood by the kitchen window, looking out at the barn. I couldn’t hear the exact words my mother was telling my grandfather. I was breathing so heavily, the wind that traveled from heart to nose to ears made a deafening sound. Of course I knew. We were going to be alone, my mother and I. She was scared. Hurt. Embarrassed even. So many feelings. So many words. He listened. Patiently. He was still overalled from the field, but I could see that he had washed his hands (and I could smell Grandma’s perfumed soap). His nails were scrubbed. I suppose he already knew. Knew that he would be holding my mother’s hand. Telling her, without words, that he would be there. For her.

He pulled me away from the window. Bent down. Looked me in the eyes. “You can turn in, or you can turn out…it’s all up to you.” There was no “and stuff.” No walking away from the conversation. He would be there. That was the promise we sat in. Silently.

I learned early on that you can walk away from the unnecessary, but not the uncomfortable. The real trick, I guess, is in knowing the difference. I’m still learning, but as I look out my kitchen window at the morning, I know days can be difficult, times even, but I am secure in the gift that of all things important, I am one.

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Four and Twenty.

We were doing so well, until we got into the higher numbers. Not only did we have to learn the language, the French words for the numbers, we had to do the math as well. To say the teacher explained to us — (A “we” that could be only described as a collection of people from the land of misfit toys. Myself – the American, the two women from South Korea, the Cambodian, the Russian, the Mexican, and the 5 Arabs.) — this would be an overstatement. But in her defense, what good reason could there be to stop giving the additional numbers their own names and start combining them in different math problems? For example — the number for eighty is not given its own name, no, it is quatre-vingts (4×20).

Deep in my wandering brain, I thought of the first time I had heard this four and twenty. Yes, yes, baked in a pie…

“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
To set before the king?”

It was my first music box. It was red and yellow, shaped like a tiny radio. You spun the knob and it sang the nursery rhyme. This one was my favorite. I dialed it in. The birds survived every time. Imagine that I thought – baked in a pie – and they survived! Glorious! I sang it again and again.

As the nursery rhyme repeated in my head, the teacher had already gotten to the nineties. It was even worse. In the nineties, you have to multiply and add. You can imagine the nightmare that 99 brings for a non-French speaking person — quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (4×20+10+9).

I suppose it will come as no surprise. To test out of this first unit, we had to hold imaginary conversations with the French officials. The first scenario, she explained, was in a store. I was to be the clerk selling dresses (so far so good.) She would be the customer. I looked at the pictures she gave to me. It showed a dress hanging on the rack. As big as life the tag read, $99.99. My heart sank. She asked how much it was. I started doing the math. The numbers raced in my head…all clunked together with the Song of Sixpence. I began my quatre-vignt-dix-ing… then stopped and said, in my best French — this dress was on sale. (Wasn’t that a dainty dish, I thought?) She laughed. I passed the exam.

I have been given the tools I need to find my way in and out of life’s pie. And so I keep singing!

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Roll on by.

She wasn’t a screamer, nor a fighter. I suppose I get that from her. But I know that my mother got stressed. And somehow it had to get out.

I wasn’t yet of driving age. We had a blue Chevy Malibu station wagon. It wasn’t built for speed. Not known for its quick pickup. The light blue remained unblurred, but for those special moments when out of traffic’s way, safely buckled in, she would wink at me, slam her Herberger shoed right foot onto the gas pedal, roaring the engine! We could only squeal tightly along with the tires. We released our breath and she, her foot off the gas. “I just had to get the soot out,” she said. And we laughed. Louder than any engine’s roar.

It took awhile, but I would come to realize it wasn’t to release the “soot” from the car, but from our very spirits. Life can clog you down. And somehow, you have to release it. Laughter seemed to be our favorite route!

I can’t Malibu myself out of today’s stress. But I have found my own ways. On the gravel path. In shades of blue on the canvas. Sometimes, just word by word on the page, hoping they take you along for the ride, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with a tear, sometimes both. The sun is coming up, hop in, my friends, let’s get the soot out!

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A love song in silver.

I raced the stairs to his class. He was a stickler for detail. One must be on time, or you will get a “greenie.” A greenie was a small piece of green paper, denoting some poor behavior – like being late, talking out of turn, not doing an assignment. And a certain amount of greenies resulted in detention or grade reduction. Of course this was incentive enough to race the halls of Central Junior High and up the stairs to his classroom, but it was more than that, I was excited for his class, English Literature. I was excited to see him. He postured straight at the front of the class. Suited and bow-tied, a pocket filled with green paper, one finger pressed to lips like a conductor waiting for the orchestra of the English language to begin.

In his fitted plaid lime green jacket he introduced us to T.S. Eliot. He read to us in perfect pitch “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The boys giggled. Mocked. Rhymed words with “frock” and quieted down after receiving their greenies. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” the lyrics danced in my heart. Never to be careful, ordinary, predictable, monotonous — this was the lesson. I put it in my heart and quietly vowed the same.

In my mother’s silverware drawer, there was one spoon different from all the rest. Before I knew of words and poems, or even what was ordinary, I loved this spoon. It was the only one I ever used. My mother made sure that for each meal it was clean. My spoon. My different spoon. Not matching. Not safe. Extraordinary.

When I moved to France, the hardest thing, (the only thing that could have made me stay) was my mother. In the first weeks, my lonesome heart ran through the doubts. Had I done the right thing? No one can give you life’s permission, but I waited for a sign. A letter arrived. Small, but an odd shape. I opened it. My spoon. My different, glorious spoon — a love song in silver.

It sits by my desk. Telling me daily to choose the extraordinary. The sun comes up. I race its stairs to the beautiful unknown.

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1, 2, 3…

She was hesitating at the side of the pool. Dipping toes. Looking back to the sun-filled lounge chairs. Adjusting her swim goggles, the elastic of her suit. I had already been in and was wrapped securely in a towel. I wanted to help her, so I just counted to three out loud, “un, deux, trois…” And in she jumped on trois!  

I don’t know why it works, this counting. Maybe it’s just the simple direction of it. The three footprint stickers placed on the floor to show you the path. An easy way to say you’ve done this before, and you’ll do it again. A veritable encouragement of “On your mark, get set, go!” 

We went to see Dominique’s mother yesterday. Each week, I get stuck on one. The pain of seeing her struggle deepens the pool of missing my own mother. But one, I get in the car. Two, we make the drive to 

Vauvenargues. I know how important this is. Yet, I know how hard it will be. Dominique signs us in at the door. My heart beats quickly. I put on my mask. In my ear, it’s my mother who whispers, “three.” We walk through the door.

Love. It’s what I count on.

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