Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: growth


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The February of my heart.

I don’t own a set of china. Not anymore. When I was a little girl my mom gave me a doll size set of dishes in March for my birthday. She told me about it in February, because she never could keep a gift-secret. She started slowly, displaying the wrapped box. I was in my bedroom, playing with my dolls when she set the box on the bed. “They’re going to love it,” she squealed. I smiled and kept playing. “You know, when they’re hungry or thirsty…” I may have been young, but this was not an indecipherable clue. She exchanged my Baby Malinda with the box, but told me not to shake it, because “the glass would break.” I smiled again, not because I knew what it was, which I did, but simply delighting in how much she loved giving, so much so that it simply burst at the seam of her mouth.

When I opened the present a month later, they were the most beautiful dishes I had ever seen. White with blue and red flowers. A coffee pot. Cups with saucers. Bowls. And plates. They were meant to be displayed. I wanted my entire doll family to be able to see them at all times. I made a small shelf from an Iverson’s shoe box. But how could I make them stand up? I asked my mom for help. Her eyes darted around the house. Questioning. Searching. I knew that she had the answer when her eyes sparkled. She got out the footstool. She hated heights. It made her dizzy. She must really be certain, I thought, for her to risk the spins. She placed the stool in front of the window. I had no idea what she was doing. She pulled a few drapery hooks, randomly, so you couldn’t even see the slight sag. She brought them to the table and pulled the middle tongs. They looked like small easels. We displayed the plates and the cups in her old shoebox. I was February excited for the rest of the year!

There is a slight sag, knowing that I don’t have them anymore. But it’s not noticeable, not when the memories of footstools and drapery hooks shine over the moment. I had such a mother!! This can never be boxed or shelved, but forever carried in the February of my heart.

Her birthday isn’t until July 6th, but it seems fitting to start a little early.

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A Schwan’s delivery.

It was hard to believe that something so delicious could make me ill. But it was evident after only a few tries, I couldn’t eat ice cream. Somehow still, I found it very exciting when the pale yellow blur of the Schwan’s ice cream delivery truck drove toward my grandma’s house. I began running up the gravel, hands waving in air, directing him into the driveway. I knew full well that my grandma’s love of root beer floats would never allow her to miss a delivery. I hopped and skipped and ran with the truck to the house. Uniformed and certain, he jumped the steps and went to the back of the truck. “You’re Elsie’s granddaughter?” “Oh, yes!” I said proudly. I could tell by the smiling way he said her name that he liked her. He unloaded two of the giant tubs as my grandma came out the screen door. Her hands ever floured or wet, or both, she wiped them on her apron before signing for our haul of vanilla. 

How wonderful, I thought, to deliver ice cream. Everyone must be so happy to see you. I was, and I didn’t even eat it. The only other delivery person that I knew was my Uncle Mike, who drove a beer truck in the Twin Cities. I asked him if people jumped up and down when he arrived. He looked confused. Like I do with the Schwan’s truck, I explained. Not so much, he said. Maybe you should paint your truck yellow, I said. He smiled. 

Surely it has to be taught. There must have been a million things my grandma delighted over with me. Things she had no interest in. How else would I have known, known this joy of feeling good for others. I loved art and clothes and drawing and crayons and “Look, look what I made! It’s flowers glued to a scrap of bark! Look!” And my grandma showed all of her teeth in love. An ear to ear joy. This is the only explanation I have for being happy, truly happy, to celebrate a Schwan’s delivery, not for me, but for her!

Joy is not owned. It is passed and given away freely. It is run along beside. A yellow blur of others. The day is pulling toward the driveway. I raise my hands in the air and skip to whatever joy it may bring. 

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Sanctuary.

When I went off to college, the first thing that surprised me was the noise. I had always studied in silence. I was alone for the most part. I didn’t turn on the television or stereo. I liked hearing the books I was reading, feeling the words I was writing. So the first few nights in the dorm were alarmingly loud. No one had headphones. Doors seemed to be quite optional. It was overwhelming to say the least. 

I wore a path to the library. And then I found the silent rooms. Doubled glass. No distractions. Glorious. My first sanctuary. It was there I could invent anything, even myself. I surrounded myself in words. Some lay quietly in yellowed pages. Others rearranged themselves and shot through my #2 pencil. It wasn’t the first time I heard my own voice, but it was the first I started to use it. 

I fear that some believe courage is only born out of chaos. That we must rise above all the noise with a clattering of our own. I suppose at times this could be necessary, but maybe the most bold is to listen to your own heart, your own mind. To brave the silence and find yourself.

There is a setting on my iphotos. It is called noise reduction. It takes away all the clutter to get at the real picture. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I have been hitting that button for most of my life. Sometimes I forget. I get caught up in all the clamor — “but he said, and she did, and they are!!!!!” It’s then I have to remove myself. Find my balance. Listen to the quiet. 

I whisper by hand into my sketchbook. And I am found. 

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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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Waddler.

We’ve never had a duck in our yard before. It was a delightful surprise when I went to open the shutters. Perhaps even more surprising, “canard,” was the word that popped into my head (french for duck).

That is the very thing that keeps me coming back to the page, the canvas, the morning shutter — this belief in the unexpected. This hope that I’ll see something new. Create something new. Feel something waddle across my heart. 

And it’s never been about shock. Shock is simple. Anyone can severely rattle and create a response. But to find the beauty in the simple. To see the spectacular in life’s gentle and daily offerings, this, I think, is the extraordinary. 

It may not sound like much, but for me it was a sign of learning. A sign of growth. And without that, what am I in this for? Sure it may be at a waddler’s pace, but I am learning continuously about life. And this is hope. This is joy! 

Je suis un canard!
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Cataloged by heart.

After my grandfather spoke, no one ever had to say, “Well, what he meant by that was…” He was perhaps the first to teach me the strength of word economy. When he said something, without flower or hesitation, I believed him. 

Even with the wide open nature of youth, the vulnerable cracks of the heart and brain are very small. So it was this simplicity that allowed the love in. Word, by compact word. 

When my college professors began to emphasize the point, speaking of editing and being precise, I could only smile. That point had long ago been walked in –firm, straight and overalled. My grandfather’s words built a library inside of me. Cataloged by heart. Endlessly referenced. 

And I use it still today. In my writing. My painting. My interactions. If you have to tell someone, “I was only kidding…”; “It was only a joke…”; “What I meant was…”; “The point they were trying to make…” —  then there is a problem. There’s no room in the heart for all of that. What a glorious filter it can be. 

I’m currently reading the book, “What you are looking for is in the Library.” When my friend recommended it, I accepted quickly. She had long ago made it past the filter. And the title itself walked easily in, wearing overalls. 

I suppose that’s where all the love is stored. Here. And I pull from it daily. My grandparents’ shelf. My mother’s shelf. Husband. Friends. Family of all covers, all languages. Those whispering still and again, my heart’s truth. 

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Before we’re asked to grow.

He was a few years younger than us. Not that many if you counted them now, but  in high school a couple of years made a big difference. And it was those few years that made us call him Pauly, not Paul. Just one little letter, a y, to differentiate.

He was my best friend’s brother. I had already learned that bad things could happen. Not just little things like a poor grade or a sack lunch you didn’t like, but gut-wrenching things, life altering things. But they hadn’t yet. So it was not only the news that shook them, but the surprise of it all. 

And Hemingway had warned us in our English prep class. Told us how we expected to be sad in the fall, but not in summer. I could hear the change in her voice. How this brilliant sun-filled day had broken them, along with Pauly’s spine. He chose to dive and not fall off the shallow dock. And with that one impulse changed the course of everything. Changed the “y” to “why?”…and just like that Pauly became Paul.

We don’t always get to be ready before we’re asked to grow. Rarely, I suppose. But we will be asked. All. And we won’t be given the answers to the questions. But we will be given the chance. The spring.

I saw the blooming trees on my walk yesterday. And I thought of him. How far he had come from the endless days at the hospital. And I smiled because the why had returned to a y, and he was Pauly again. I touched the pink surprise of the bloom, and kept walking.

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Letting it in.

It’s not that I have to, it’s that I get to… Don’t get me wrong, I often have to remind myself of that very thing, but it’s always true.

It was a springtime funeral. I remember it because I was wearing my birthday dress in the back of the Chevy Impala. I know it was the first grade because Gerald Reed complimented me on that dress. (It’s funny, but I recall my childhood more in grades than in years. Perhaps that’s the power of learning.) It must have been a distant family member or friend because we stopped to pick up my grandparents. I scooted over on the maroon interior to make room for my grandpa. Springtime was the busiest for him. All the preparing. It set the stage for the entire year. Keeping the farm was based on the work put in each spring. My mother, knowing this, said as he slid in the back, “It’s nice to have you here, but you didn’t have to come…” “I don’t have to,” he said, “I get to.” He patted my knee. I don’t remember the funeral. But I remember this.

We will be asked to do the most impossible things. To bear the unbearable. To live the unlivable. Love guarantees this. But all that we get from it — for me — makes it worth every second. We get to love each other. Be there for each other.

Do the words come easier some days than others? Sure. Does the love come easier at times? Of course. But I get to do this. We get to do this. Feel this. Live this. And I will choose my life, scoot over to let it all in, every day.

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Three Snow Whites and a Viking.

Three Snow Whites stepped out of the Starbucks in Bay City,Texas. It’s just a tiny town. It would have been surprising enough that they even had a Starbucks. And it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but they weren’t laughing. Their shiny black hair blew in the southern breeze, along with their silky yellow and blue dresses. Just shy of bluebirds on their shoulders, they looked perfectly Disney. They sipped on their coffees. Reached for their keys, and went to their cars, as if this happened every Saturday. And maybe it does, but we won’t be here to tell. 

I could have raced after them with my cell phone. Begged for a photo. But coming from a small town, I know the code. 

In Alexandria, Minnesota we have a statue of a large Viking. On his shield, it claims this is the Birthplace of America. In the summer, when our population doubled — all those coming from the Twin Cities to cool down in one of our many lakes — we could see them laugh. Poking fun at our big statue. Jumping on his feet. Taking ironic photos before heading off to the golf course. 

I would like to say that I defended him, us. But in my cut-off shorts and off brand tennis shoes, I didn’t yet have the words. I hope I apologized on my daily ride past him, perched on my banana seat bike, but I’m not sure that I did. 

Maybe it WAS the birthplace of America, maybe it wasn’t…I’m still not sure, but it was our birthplace, of our America. All of my beginnings began at his feet. It was the end of Van Dyke Road, and the start of Main. And even though at times it felt like I was the only one living this life, somehow it was not just my destiny. No, this we shared. Maybe all small towns do. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t have to. This was our town. Our Viking. I had to leave to find the words, but even from a country away, I will claim it. Defend it. My hometown.

So no, I didn’t find out about the three Snow Whites. That’s their story to tell. I sit back on my imaginary banana seat bike, and enjoy the view as they step outside their destiny.

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When someone shows you their hope, it’s hard to unsee it.


Living in the south of France, I see the Sainte Victoire mountain daily. Each time, I give thanks for my current view, and also for the view Paul Cezanne gave us in his paintings. Would I have seen it without him? Would I have noticed the extraordinary beauty of this mountain without his vision? I’m not sure, so I give thanks with each passing step.

I suppose it has always been this way. My grandfather did the same with his farm. Without him, perhaps these fields would have just been blurs from a car window. But not for me. Not since walking with him. Holding his roughened artist hand that turned those fields from black to green to gold each year. Work. Magic. Love. I slow down the car.

We all have a responsibility to find the beauty. To share it. It’s everywhere. Poets and philosophers have tried to explain it. (Certainly smarter than me.) But maybe it’s all about hope. Maybe that’s what makes everything beautiful. So that’s what I try to create. In the faces. In the paintings. In this life. There is hope. Always, if we choose to see it, and share it with each other.

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