Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: school


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Carried.

It was the heaviest book I bought in college — The Riverside Shakespeare. Weighing in at about 6 pounds, it would have been a lot to carry across campus for any English major, but for me, who spent the majority of my college years slinged and on crutches, it was extraordinary. Yet, I loaded it, joyfully, in my backpack, and hopped on one foot from M5, our fifth floor walk-up dorm apartment, across the quad to the humanities building, sometimes over ice and snow. I never fell. You could argue that the weight of the 2000 pages kept me stable, glued to the ground, but I will tell you it was most probably the strength of the words that held me. Still do. 

When moving to France, I let go of most possessions. And it wasn’t that hard. Furniture and shoes. Clothing and decorations. Dishes and beds. Table and tv. Trading it all in for love was an easy decision. I kept personal items. Paintings mostly, and a few books. It might surprise you, that this heaviest of books made the trip. Shakespeare rests on my shelf. Do I love the book? Yes. Do I love the words, the poems, the plays? Of course. But maybe most of all, I know that you can’t let go of what got you here — what held you, carried you, gave you strength. I suppose that’s why I have this heaviest of books beside me still. It’s why I write of my mother, my grandparents, my teachers and friends. I know what brought me here. What keeps me upright to this very day. 

Walking yesterday, I was listening to a podcast of Dame Judi Dench. She rattled off the words written by Shakespeare, and they lifted me over rock and trail. The announcer was so surprised that she still had all of these words at the ready. I wasn’t. The heart takes on the carry, and allows the journey, still. 

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What’s taught is what’s known.

Miss McCarty said the composition must be typed. This was in my tenth grade year. A year when typewriters still existed. A year before I would take typing class. A year when senior girls would type your paper for ten dollars. A year when ten dollars coming out of my mother’s paycheck (a paycheck from the very school that requested the typed composition) could rock our monthly budget enough that something else had to be denied. A year when I couldn’t bear to be that rocking cause. 

Miss McCarty was, for the most part, terrifying. I sat in the front row because I thought it would be easier “to see it coming.” Oh, there were some teenage boys that tested her, but only once. I always finished my homework. Early. And I my handwriting was neat. It was my last class of the day. The final bell rang. I sat in my seat. I had two copies of my composition, not yet due for several days. One in cursive. One printed. “You can read it easily,” I tried to explain. “No,” she said. I could feel it welling, this one tear. I willed it not to escape. It rested on my eyelash. She tidied her desk. Stood up. Starting walking to the door. I stayed seated. “I don’t have it,” I quivered. “What?” she asked. “The ten dollars. I don’t have it.” She took the papers from me. Put them on her desk. “It has to be typed,” she said and walked me out the door. The tear let go and I walked across Jefferson Street.  

I don’t know if she paid for it. If she typed it herself. But when I returned to class the next day, it was sitting on my chair. Typed. I looked up at her. She wasn’t smiling, but she gave me a nod. And it was done. 

I turned it back in with the other students. I knew she didn’t want a gushing thank you. That wasn’t her style. 

She returned the graded papers. I received an A, and a note at the bottom — “You can always find a way.” I caught her eye and nodded. 

I’m typing with my left hand and two on my right. Ever healing. Ever grateful. Finding my way. 

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Window dreams.

I have never been a go back to bed person. Even waiting for the winter school closings to be announced on the KXRA radio station, while all the neighborhood children were praying for anything — even two hours late — I prayed for fully closed or regular hours. I just didn’t understand the advantage of two hours late, I was already up. 

Full steam into that project, that emotion, even that brick wall. Maybe it’s my sign, my nature, my upbringing… I don’t know, but it is me. And I wouldn’t change it. But I have to keep reminding myself, that it’s not for everyone. And as natural as it is for me to want to get started, it is as natural for others to wish for a 10:00am bus. I smile, because I remember seeing the others, the Norton girls, still running out late with wet hair, even with the extra time. And for brief moments, I envied it, but I didn’t change.

So it comes as no surprise that I school myself each morning. Early. French lessons. Blog. Exercise. My “bus” arrives early. I only mention it because I can see the snow flurries out the window, and children’s prayers floating through the air. For some they will come true. For some they won’t. But one thing is sure, for both, for all, time will move faster than anyone can imagine. But the scent of wet clothes, and chilly toes, and wild hopes will remain. My dreams fog the glass of the window. I draw in a heart. And begin.

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The romance of the keys.

We learned to type on electric typewriters at Jefferson Senior High. You could hear the click of the keys from down the hall. It was located on the other side of the school building from the band and choir rooms, but there was a music to it, all the same. 

I certainly don’t miss the “white out,” or replacing the ribbon. But there was an art to it. Even when we were all typing the same thing — “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” — we would make our own mistakes, different letters would be painted over, then typed over again and each sheet was an original, with it’s own look, it’s own sound. 

I type now on my iPad. It can go with me anywhere. I can correct mistakes in an instant. There is an ease, a freedom, unmatched. But I must admit, there is a tiny part of me that longs for the music. The romance of the keys.

I want to allow for this in my daily life. I want to see the romance in all of my mistakes — and oh, I am making them for sure — daily tangled in my not so quick brown foxes. I, we, need to see the beauty of the learning. 

Today’s blank sheet opens with the sun. I set off, not in search of perfection, but poetry. Click, click, click, begins my imperfect heart. 

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Heading North.

Heart first.

I know there are strategies to Wordle. Of course certain letters appear more than others. Using the most vowels on the first word is helpful. If you want to take a deep dive, there are websites. Tips. Tricks. Hacks. I love the game, but I don’t play like that.

Yesterday, the first email I received was inquiring about my painting of the North End. I used the word “north” as my second word, and solved the puzzle. It’s fun to get a two, sure, but for me it’s the most fun when I can relate it to what’s happening in my life. Not that I think the New York Times actually bases the game around me. It’s not “about” me — I know this. But I like to be involved. Insert myself in the game. I want to be a part of it all.

All the teachers at Washington Elementary gave us valuable skills. How to read, spell, write, do the math. But it was Miss Green who not only gave us the tools, but showed us how to build something. We could have just written reports. Structured sentences and paragraphs, but she had us taking Spelling Trips. Each week we randomly picked a place on the map and had to write a story about getting there, being there. We had to place ourselves inside the lesson.

I suppose I’m still doing that. Joyfully. What’s the point of learning, of living even, if I’m not involved. Certainly it changes the stakes. I know being involved means I’m also going to risk being hurt. Hearts on sleeves are vulnerable — but oh how they can feel the love!

You can play it however you like — Wordle, this life… that’s the beauty of it, we get to choose. Me, I’m going to throw myself in the mix, heart first — heading North!

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Social studies.

We never had a lack of things to judge each other by, and Central Junior High made sure that we never ran out. Of course there was the usual hierarchy of those in advanced courses. The grading system. The hands raised in class. The sulking heads in the back of the room. But then they sent us to gym class. They timed us around tracks and arm-flexed hangs. They measured and weighed us. Tested us through units of gymnastics and every ball game. With no self-esteem to spare, they sent us to the pool once a week. It would have been enough to be on display in our one piece suits and skin-capped heads in front of the other 20 or so girls, but the pool was adjacent to the lunch room, separated only by glass windows. Like the theatre view in an operating room, the 9th grade boys eating cafeteria pizza had a thirty minute view. We longed for the “eyes on your own paper” rule of law.

I suppose the greatest gift was the lack of time. The allotted 5 minutes to shower, dress, and speed walk (no running allowed) with wet hair flinging down the halls, to math, or English, or Social studies, didn’t allow much time for scrutiny. It’s only as I’m typing this that I realize there was really no need for the social studies class, we were living it, from beginning to ending bell.

I only mention it, because I use the skill they gave us, almost daily. I can get trapped in the moment of self-awareness. How do I look? How do I appear? Am I being judged? But really, nothing has changed since junior high. I don’t have the time to worry about what everyone else is doing…so certainly others don’t either. (And if you do have the time for judgement, maybe it’s time to switch course. Quickly. Down another hallway.)

There is so much to learn. I hope I continue. I’m sure I stumble on my way to daily social studies. But then I see you, my friends, my fellows, my human contacts, all trying to make our way, and I smile.




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Open road.

It was just after recess. Even on the coldest of days, we were always sweaty. We hung our coats back on the pegs. Mrs. Erickson stood at the front of our third grade class. She had a stack of papers in her hand. She told us to sit and take out our No.2 pencils. She gave a handful to the front person of each desk row. We passed the sheets back to the person behind us, along with our comments and guesses of what was to come. Each pass was like a short game of “whisper around the world.”

I held the horizontal lined paper between my fingers. It seemed all good things started with paper at Washington Elementary. The paper was lined, but not just single lines. Groups of three. Two solids middled by a dotted line. I was certain they were little highways. I would turn out to be right.

She used a three pronged chalk to make the same lines on the blackboard and began our cursive journey. She had the most beautiful penmanship I had ever seen. Upper and lower cases flowed along the paper highway, and we were off! We had already learned to read. Mrs. Bergstrom saw to that. But this, she said, was how we would communicate. It would be part of our identity. I opened the windows of my imaginary car. The wind blew through my hair and hand and I began to write. My name. My address. Sentences. Tiny trips at first, and then I was out on the open road. Faster. Longer. Free!

In the tenth grade, they taught us “behind the wheel,” in Driver’s Ed. But it was Mrs. Erickson who first gave us the keys.

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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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Out of the fog.

We never had a big rainy season in autumn. We often moved from summer to a short, but spectacular wave of reds, oranges and yellows in the trees. Sometimes it seemed that the anxious snow was daring the leaves to fall so it could follow suit. So a foggy, rainy day seemed rather special to me. 

I stood by the mailboxes across from the end of our driveway, just at the top of the hill. Blanketed in white. Not warm. Not cold. Just hovering. First I saw the lights. Then the golden yellow of the school bus as it released its air brakes. Although the bus driver/law enforcement tech school student didn’t seem surprised that I stepped out of the low hanging cloud, I still felt dreamy. I plopped down immediately in the front seat by the door so I could get the best view. I knew it would be the most foggy at the bottom of the hill. At Norton’s. I wanted to be the first to see which one of the five girls would appear like magic out of the white. I guessed by height, as I could only make out a silhouette.  Was it Shari? Or Lynn? I could see the movement of long hair. I went with Shari. The brakes gasped. The door opened. And she stepped out of the dream. Wet hair flinging. It was Shari. I refrained from clapping, but I smiled out loud. 

When I stepped outside to open the morning shutters, I could feel the air around me. It took me a minute. My first thought was I hope it doesn’t rain. I made my way around the house. By the time I reached the front door I could feel it. “It was dreamy, wasn’t it?” my heart asked my brain. “Yes,” I said, stepping out of the fog, and into my smile.

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A stroke of Mrs. Bergstrom.

There is a reason we call it spelling. The magic of the letters, when put together to form words, can indeed cast a magical spell within and around us. 

She stood in front of the class of first graders. Mrs. Bergstrom. Tall and straight. Not with a robe, nor a hat, but she did have a wand. Some might remember it as just a teaching pointer. But not me. As she tapped it against each letter chalked perfectly on the blackboard, white dust — fairy dust I was sure — sprung into the air. We were spelling. And it was magic. 

That magic moved from the blackboard to our Big Chief notebooks. Then marched with us single file to the library down the terrazzo halls of Washington Elementary. With each book we moved into neighborhoods. Made friends with dogs. Rode horses with cowboys and bloomed into teenage girls, and boys with paper routes. Everything was possible in the words. 

I’d like to think it still is. As I type each morning, I take that magical journey. With each letter I make a path. Sprinkling it with a stroke of Mrs. Bergstrom. Because it’s all beautiful, even the hardest of days — when wanded into the words of “look what we survived,” and “look what we’ve become” — are nothing short of magical! I still believe it. I have to believe it. I hope we all can.

Because she didn’t just give us the happy words. She taught us how to spell. How to make our way through it all. Today, I too will stand straight and tall. And I promise, I will not waste the magic.

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