Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: home town


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Dish towels and dancing.

I don’t think it makes me a serial killer just because I like my dishtowel to hang neatly. (They seemed to imply this in the movie Sleeping with the Enemy.)

I suppose I could have gone either way. My grandma’s kitchen was always, well, I’ll say it, a mess. Dishes piled head high. Pots still on the stove. My mother liked a clean sink. The dishrag hung alone over the faucet, testing the humidity level of her apartment. It was a good day for her if she woke to a dry rag in an empty sink.

It’s funny what brings us comfort. An ironed dish towel hanging neatly in the kitchen is enough to start my day off right. And it doesn’t mean I love my grandma any less, I just know what works for me.

There was a tiny plaque by my grandma’s stove. Above the picture of a very pregnant woman it read, “I should have danced all night.” Perhaps my mother took that advice to heart. She never taught me how to cook, but she did teach me how to dance. Her kitchen recipes included “Slow, quick-quick. Slow, quick-quick. 1-2-3, 1-2-3. A heel and a toe and a polka step.” And so we danced in that clean kitchen, never disrupted by a boiling pot.

I suppose there’s a little of both of them in my French kitchen. I know my grandma is watching as I boil the fruit from our trees to make jam. And it is my mother’s hand that gives me the slight nudge to change direction as she dances me through my clean kitchen.

When my son-in-law washes his hands and leaves the towels in a heap, I don’t really want to kill him. But I would like to tell him a story. Of a chubby woman laughing, a tall woman dancing, both leading me in love.

It’s a crazy world. We all have to find our own joyful way. Do what works for you. (And don’t forget to wash your hands.)

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My shipping department.

My shipping department.

There is an empty space where the painting hung. It sold yesterday, Lake Agnes. My first thought, of course, was of joy, but my second thought was of Herberger’s. More specifically, the Herberger’s store that used to be in Alexandria, Minnesota.

My mom, served as the unofficial ambassador. She knew every clerk. Every shopper. For her, and a majority of the town, Herberger’s was not just retail, but social.

Carol worked in the shipping department, right next to the office. My mom would see her when she went to pay her bill. They became friends. It was only after a few conversations that my mom was retrieving empty cardboard boxes to bring to me to use for shipping artwork. I was shipping daily to stores and galleries, so my box bill would have been a fortune. They had a need to recycle — it worked out well for everyone. My mom would fill the back of her hatchbacked Ford Focus and drive them to me in Minneapolis. We then took the time for coffee, wine and shopping. By Sunday evening her car was filled with bags from Anthropologie or Sundance or Macy’s, and the joyful cycle continued.

Of course nothing was the exact size. I became an expert at creating boxes. I could score and trim and shrink wrap and tape with the best of them. It might sound odd to say, but I was proud of it. Still am.

Yesterday I went to the garage and found two scraps (I use the term with affection) of cardboard, and a large amount of bubble wrap. The cardboard was from some garden tool that Dominique ordered, and the bubble wrap from a guitar that was given as a gift to the kids. They weren’t dirty, but still I vacuumed and wiped each piece sparkling clean. I wrapped it with precision. The box is square and strong. The painting is, and will be safe.

I smile as it sits beside me. Knowingly part of my story. Even as I live a country away, and Herberger’s is long closed, I know what, who, helped get me here.

The world is changing. Artificial intelligence is nipping at our heels. People are contemplating if it will take over the arts. I don’t think so. I certainly hope not. Sure, I suppose it’s possible to create the painting. But what you can’t manufacture is the story. The lives involved in one piece of art. Carol folding boxes. The Herberger’s store manager helping my mom load the car. My mom. Her love and support. Telling all who would listen. It fills me still.

This painting that I sell today is of Lake Agnes. One of the first lakes I knew in my hometown. It will ship from France and travel to Arkansas, carrying the stories of those who first lifted me.

We never make the journey alone.

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Banked.

I’m not sure if the tellers were elevated, or if it was just my five year old vantage point, but everything at First National Bank of Alexandria seemed important. I held my mother’s left hand as she struggled to remove the deposit slip from her purse with her other. I needed her to balance me as my head circled the high ceilings. Everything smelled of wood and dollar bills. When the transaction was finished, the teller thanked my mom by name. She knows her, I thought. I was so impressed! She handed me a yellow safety sucker from the bowl behind her desk. (Red was my favorite, but I still said thank you.) 

I was taught that it wasn’t polite to stare, but I couldn’t look away. I could see just the tip of it. It was a flattened cardboard pig with tiny slots filled with coins. “Would you like one,” the teller asked, “to start saving?” More than anything, I thought, and gazed up at my mom to see if it was ok. She was smiling, so I agreed. She handed me the empty cardboard pig and I thought my heart would explode. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I was part of the transaction. And I felt as high as a First National ceiling.

My little pig got heavier with each dime and nickel slotted into place. Months later, when it was full, (from the random couch coin, or my weekly allowance), my mom asked if I wanted to put it in the bank. The real bank. I did, but I wanted to hold it for a while longer…feel the weight of it, the beautiful weight of my transactions. “Hold them as long as you need,” she said. 

It feels the same with memory. Each day I place one in a heart slot, and hold on. Banked. Feeling the beautiful weight of all the joy of my days. All the hands held. The smiles exchanged. The love passed back and forth. The comforting weight of my transactions. “Can you still feel it?” they ask. “More than anything,” I reply…”more than anything!”

Hold everything dear.

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Newsprint and Windex.

.

It was only an hour each weekday. After school. I’d get off the bus at around 3:30pm and wait. Two picture windows faced our driveway. Some days, I could be distracted by The Brady Bunch, but the majority of those 60 minutes before my mom came home from work was spent waiting against those windows.

They taught us at Washington Elementary not to touch the glass windows that lined our classroom, because it was the janitor who would have to clean the windows dailly. And we didn’t want to make his job harder, did we? But seeing how it was my job to clean the windows at home each Thursday afternoon with newspaper and Windex, I wasn’t that concerned. I fogged the glass with my breath. Drew smiley faces. Smeared them away. Blew again. Then sad faces. Erased and blew. Challenged myself to tic-tac-toe. Continuously smearing cheek and fingers across the glass. Waiting. And waiting.

The gravel road always gave sufficient warning. The sound of the tires popping at 4:37pm would tell me that my mom was about to arrive. I’d hoist my top above my waist and wipe the window. Race to the garage entry. Fling the door. And I was saved.

She never mentioned it — the streaked glass. But of course she must have known. It wasn’t like my t-shirt wipe gave a proper cleaning. But that’s who she was — the person who allowed me to be me. Never made fun of my silly antics. She saw me. And loved me.

I smiled each Thursday afternoon as I took last week’s Echo and wiped it across the pane. It sparkled clean along with my heart. A fresh start. All waiting’s worries were washed away.

I see it now. So clearly. I thought she was saving me, daily, and she did, but even more importantly, she gave me the ability to save myself. A gift I continue to use. I smile out my morning window, and I am saved.

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“Some.”

It was pretty clear from the start that I wasn’t going to be a saint. But a poet? Maybe.

I knew she loved poems. My mother. She tucked me in each night with Emily Dickinson. I was safe and feathered (the sweet spot where hope lives).

I suppose I saw early on how the words lifted her. How even in her darkest hour, they offered this light. I wanted to be a part of that. That lifting light.

Once I started looking, I could see it. You had to want to see it, but it was there — the poetry of our town. You had to pass the giant Viking statue on main street to get to my school. The giant Viking that claimed us as the “Birthplace of America.” Written on his shield, what could be more poetic than this? Inside Washington Elementary, Mr. Iverson brought the bouncing words and notes into our kindergarten music class. The librarian read the words aloud that soon we would learn to spell in Mrs. Berstrom’s first grade classroom. Words screamed from monkey bars and whispered in lavatory lines. Words I scribbled in crayon and revealed to my mother at bedtime. Hope lived.

Poetry winded through my wet hair as I raced on my bicycle from Lake Latoka. Poems ran beneath my sanded feet in the ballpark. Waved through the farm fields of my grandfather. The open windows of my grandma’s car. Bounced upon the neighbor’s screen doors. Crackled in the summer gravel of Van Dyke Road. Fell from autumn trees. Rested in winter snows. And returned with spring — just as promised. Summer bikes once again pulled from garages.

I attached the playing card to the wheel beneath my banana seat. The joke would now be on my brother, because he could no longer ask me to play “52 pickup” – now it would be 51. The click-clacking echoed through the streets as I pedaled. What was making the sound? Was it the wheel? The card? Or the wind?

And so it was with the poem. Who was writing it? Was it me? My mom? The town? The words echoed in my heart. I wrote them on paper. And we were saved.

They don’t make me want to go back, but pay attention to the place I’m in — the poem that is gently click-clacking right outside my window. A love that keeps lifting. Safe. And feathered.

“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”

STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

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The wisdom of gravel.

“If you know wilderness in the way you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.” Terry Tempest Williams

Maybe it was because one of my after school Thursday chores was dusting. Or that my tennis shoes were never white. That winter’s snowballs often contained bruising tiny pebbles. Or that my mom’s car forever needed washing. There were many reasons to dislike the gravel of Van Dyke road. I felt unmodern. Somehow behind. I had a sense of urgency to catch up. To go beyond. And certainly the graveled pace of this childhood road was only slowing me down.

I chased the pavement. Off to school. Jobs. Apartments. Books and art. Creation. Life. Smooth beneath, it all went so fast. My bike. My car. Even my shoes clicked along at a feverish pace. 

A country away, I hear it again, the slow crunch of gravel beneath my feet as I walk my daily route. My feet found their way back to the wilderness they ran from. Tiny pebbles say, “but you were hurt there.” Yes, I whisper. Massive rocks that line hills and turn into mountains say, “But you were loved there.” “Yes!” I shout. 

I have paid and paved my way in dust. Love walks with me. Slowing me down? Enough to see, I think. To feel. And I will never let it go.

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Nothing shouted.

The first time I visited New England was with my mother. I was just out of college. Up until then all of my “vacation” time had been used to have surgery. To say we both fell in love immediately would not be an exaggeration. The main street was lined with seemingly freshly painted white houses. Porched and welcoming. A street sweeper (by hand) waved us in. Washed windows revealed the contents. Clothes. Beautiful clothes for sale lived in this house. My mother looked at me and beamed. We walked the white stairs and opened the door. Was that the slight hum of angels singing? Or just my mother’s heart. 

It was all like this – this understated elegance. Lobster on paper plates. Lawns mowed. Cars washed. Nothing gilded. Nothing shouted – it wasn’t necessary, it showed. 

I visited again. Several times. I have never harbored a New England address. And though I may have never actually “there,” I have lived in it, here. 

There are so many gorgeous places around the world. I have been lucky enough to visit so many of them. And as the saying goes, “if you’re lucky enough to be here, you’re lucky enough.” 

I have, in the past, been guilty of waiting — waiting to be happy if I was in the right place. I’m learning, daily, to create those places, those feelings, that joy, that comfort, in the exact place that I am. Making the hotel breakfasts. Dressing up to go to the grocery store. Eating slowly. Seeing the day for the first time, because, aren’t we all? Today is really our vacation from yesterday. Our journey towards tomorrow. I’m going to take those photo opportunities along the way.

The electrician was here the other day. He finished his job. I don’t know his name. But I invited him inside. He vacationed for a few brief moments at our kitchen table. A cup of coffee. A plate of cookies. I smiled, hoping, for these few moments, that maybe I was his New England. He asked where I was from. And, as so many people do, asked which place I liked better, the US or France. How could I explain that I was trying to live in the best of places. That I carried a piece of it all within me. That I was a French breakfast in a New England town. A relic of Rome. Dancing to the joyful music in Spain. Dangling my feet in a summer Minnesota lake. Standing in front of my own painted “Mona Lisa.”  My heart jimbled at the thought. I could hear the angels softly sing, my mother now one of them. “I love it all,” I said. And meant it. 

I’m here. And I am home.

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Permanent strokes

There was only one tree in my grandma’s yard with sour apples. They were my mom’s favorite. Little green apples, with a sour so big, it almost bit you back. A sour that squeezed through your squinted right eye, then into your clenched jaw bone. And rummaged down the back of your throat. 

What I loved most about them was that my grandma always had a brown paper sack filled to the top, with “Ivy” written in black permanent marker. I loved that she knew her daughter. 

It was with that same care that my mother packed my school lunch. A little brown paper bag. Every day, since the second day of first grade. On my first day that year, the lunch lady made me eat a pickle. A pickle!!!! Worse than any green sour… Both of my eyes squeezed shut. In horror. In prayer. That this horrible thing would be forced down my throat. 

As silly as it sounds, for me it was traumatic. And what I loved most about it, was the fact my mom never made fun of me. She knew me. She always let me eat grandma’s sweet apples. She packed my lunch every day. I saw my name. In black permanent marker. And I was loved. I was saved.

You just can’t pencil it in. This life. You have to really see people. Know them. Accept them. Love them. Love them with full, broad, permanent strokes. That is a love that never fades.

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What I hold on to.

It was Mrs. Bergstrom, our first grade teacher, who asked us to write down the names of our family members. Including our grandparents. We were six years old. I was surprised that within this handful of years, most of my friends hadn’t learned their actual names. They wrote down things like gramma, or grammy. I wrote Elsie. Grandma Elsie.

It had only taken one visit to Jerry’s Jack and Jill, the small grocery store that sold the coconut marshmallows that my grandma liked, to be certain of her name. Before we walked through the door, the man arranging the carts outside the store, waved and said, “Hi Elsie!”  Inside, the woman behind the thick glasses at the first register said, “Oh, Hi Elsie!” 

It was somewhere in the first aisle that I knew she was not just my grandmother, but a woman of this town, of this world. And her name was Elsie. I was proud of her. So proud I wasn’t even annoyed at the amount of time it took to fill the cart. She had to stop and visit every few feet. Exchange a recipe. Report on the “kids.” Ask about an illness. Offer her prayers. Listen to the butcher’s joke. Repeat it as her own and laugh in aisle three. Eat some marshmallows from the yet-to-be-paid-for plastic sack. Introduce me as Ivy’s youngest around each corner. The cart was filled along with my heart.

I knew, that in knowing her name, I was a part of it all — a part of her. I was a part of this Elsie, this Ivy, and I belonged.

We said our long goodbyes in true Minnesota fashion, and followed the cart man out to my grandma’s car. He put the bags in the back. Tapped his hand twice on the roof of the car, to signify the shopping experience was complete. “You take care now, Elsie,” he said. And I knew that she would. Especially of me.

We drove with the windows open back to the farm. I knew the way by heart. I knew this life by name.

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Jelly Beans.

We often met in St. Cloud. It was half way for both of us. Just an hour for each. We tried on clothes. Praised our figures. Three-way laughed in mirrors. Had lunch slowly. Splurging with a glass of wine, while going over what we did or didn’t buy. Then lattes at Caribou or Barnes and Noble. And if the season provided, off we went to Walgreens to get the candy of choice, like Jelly Bird Eggs this time of year. 

Loosened, comforted, caffeinated, she headed north and I headed south. It was less than half an hour before I called her at the designated mark on the freeway. Pleasureland. I think they sold motorhomes. I just liked the name. When she picked up her cell phone, I got to say, “I’ve reached Pleasureland.” “I’m still lonesome,” she said. “Me too.” Then I could hear her reach inside the sack of candy. It was glorious how love made sweet and sad the same. 

We lived through it all on that route. I wrote my first book in that car, on that journey. We lived through breakups and family members passing. Weddings. Events to plan for. Outfits to buy for them. We laughed and cried on that freeway. Gathering all of our experiences. And it all got simply blended into love.

I navigate through the laughter and tears now. But daily I hear the call. She’s telling me, “I’ve reached Pleasureland.” My heart, all glorious with love, I reply, “I’m still lonesome.” She replies, “Have a jelly bean.”

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