Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: school


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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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Still. And again.

In Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class at Washington Elementary, there wasn’t a problem that sitting still couldn’t solve. If we were too hot, “Sit still,” she would say softly. Too excited. Too nervous. Too tired. Too anything. We solved it all by sitting quietly at our desks. In the saving grace of her whisper, we knew everything would be ok.

I listen for her voice, still, and still. Those calming words that told us not to run away from it, but just be in it. I think we often get afraid to feel. We want to fight it. Push it away. Outrun it on the playground. It’s a lesson I’m still learning. Even knowing it. Living it. Creating it on the canvas, I still have to keep learning. But she was right, Mrs. Strand. And when I allow myself to just feel it, calmly, trusting the words that my five year old self found to be true, it is then that I can breathe, recover and become. I can love, still, and again.

I sit in this morning whisper, and know everything will be ok.

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Barefoot and pajamaed.

“When the barn catches fire, I am wearing the wrong negligee…” Maxine Kumin (from her poem The Longing to be saved.)

My mother’s first fire was not on the farm where she was growing up, but the dorm of her school. She didn’t want to go away to this school, but her parents were sending her older brother Ron because it was an Ag School (meaning it finished the courses early in the year so the students could go back to work on their family farms.) It was less than an hour away by car, but with no phones, no form of communication whatsoever, the distance felt unbearable. 

Of course the fire started at the beginning of the week, not long after she was dropped off. There would be no contact with her parents until the end of the week when they came to pick her up. Forced to run from the burning dormitory, to save herself, she had to leave everything behind. She stood outside in her pajamas as the flames lit the northern sky. The neighboring dorm was saved. She was able to borrow clothes during the week from another reluctant farm girl. Returning them to her lender Friday afternoon, she stood at the school’s entrance in her pajamas, waiting for her mother.

Not many words were exchanged in that long car ride home. But she was allowed to go back to her high school in town the next year.

It wasn’t her last fire. Literally or figuratively. Through the years she would be asked to run from life’s flames and save herself. To save me. And she did it, never out of fashion.

She loved poetry. She would have loved this poem. I wish I could have found it sooner. We would have read it together. Word by word. Over and over. Laughing. Crying. Saving each other. Again and again. 

I miss her. So much. Some days the embers feel too close as I stand “barefoot and pajamaed.” But then a sweet memory appears, of joy, of laughter, of love, and I feel her car pull up into heart’s view. And I am saved.

Let’s get dressed for the day!

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Judy “Blumed.”

We were sitting on the stools in the 7th grade science lab, trying to erase the smell of gas from our brains, and the face of the boy that always turned it on and laughed. Each tick of the clock brought us closer to the bell. I paid close attention because there was no time to waste. The science lab was at the far end of Central Junior High, near the pool. My next class was social studies with Mr. Temple at the complete opposite end on the second floor. The allotted 5 minutes allowed just enough time to run to my locker, change my books and be seated in the classroom. Because it wasn’t enough to be racing through the door at the sound of the bell. He demanded that you were seated, ready to learn, when it sounded, or you would get detention. Detention — the horror. The humiliation. I had never received it. And I was proud of that. So I sat in the “starter’s position,” ready to race to social studies. The bell rang and I jumped. I was nearly out the door when I heard her gasp. I turned to see my lab partner (and friend) glued to her stool, mouth open. There wasn’t time, but she looked at me so desperately. I ran back. She whispered in my ear. She got her period. I looked at the clock. Looked at her face. Took off my sweatshirt for her to wrap around her waist. And went with her to the bathroom. 

The bell rang before I had even left the floor. When I ran through his door, he was standing at the front of the room, detention slip in hand. He wasn’t unreasonable. He always gave you the chance to defend yourself. I suppose I could have given the full “Judy Blume” version of it all, but the whole class was listening. I shook my head, and held out my hand to grab the slip.

We had no idea of forever at the time. We lived minute by minute. And were willing to give up 60 of them, detained after hours, just to save each other. She asked me the next day in Mr. French’s class, “Did you get in trouble?” “No,” I smiled, “no trouble at all.”

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Loving through.

When I told her I was never going back to school, I meant it. It was in the first week of my first grade at Washington Elementary and the first time I had ever been called a bad name. It being my first time, I didn’t remember the name, but I remembered the venom that spewed from Steve Brolin’s mouth and landed directly on my heart of firsts. 

Of course it happened the first thing that morning on the playground, so I had to hold it in all day. By the time my feet jumped from the last step of the bus, the tears began to flow. Big, bulbous bubbles that caught for several seconds in my eyelashes. Tears that puddled in the fold of my new dress as I sat on the cement floor of the garage, willing my mom to come home early from work and receive the news.

She knew something was wrong immediately, seeing me sprawled on the cement, with my backpack laying atop the garbage can. “I’m never going back,” I said. “Ok,” she said calmly. She didn’t argue with me. Just took my hand. Washed my face. Kissed my eyelashes. 

It being autumn, the nights had just begun to get cooler. “Would you like to put on your winter pajamas?” she asked. The feel of the soft plaid down my arms. Down my legs. Wrapped early for Christmas, she tucked me under the crisp white sheet. “I don’t think I want my books in the garbage anymore.” “I’ll get them,” she said. “But just for me,” I said, “I’m not going back.” “OK,” she said. 

I could hear her getting ready for work. Smell the coffee. My chubby feet wiggled beneath the plaid and hit the carpet. I brushed my teeth. My hair. My brown sack lunch was ready at the end of the table, right beside my backpack – it along with my heart – rescued. I guess we both knew I was going back. “I don’t like Steve Brolin,” I said. “That’s OK. Do you remember what he said,” she asked me for the first time. “Not really,” I said. “Do you remember I love you?” she smiled. “Yes!” I smiled. She got in her car and waved to me as I stood by the mailboxes waiting for the bus. It was the first time I got over something. It wouldn’t be the last. My mother showed me how to love my way through. I walk by her photo and wave, smiling, and knowing, everything is OK.

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To find out who I am.

They didn’t protect us from getting lost – in fact they encouraged it — our teachers at Central Junior High. We were swung through a carousel of mini-courses, each lasting six weeks. It seems they knew that in order to find ourselves we first had to wander off the paths of our familiar.

The transitions seemed abrupt. Moving from sewing to drafting. Drafting to metals. Metals to plastics. Back up to home-ec. Back down to wood shop. My mother’s laundry room/storage area was stacked with an uneven wooden shelf, a dangerously sharp edged metal toolbox, a yellow stuffed dog sewn with red thread, a glitter filled plastic soap dish in the shape of a pear, blue prints for an undetermined office building, and a lingering bitter taste of a slightly unbaked apple pie.

I suppose it was this balance that helped to form me. Being thrust from place to place in school, and then welcomed home, no matter what I carried, in hand or in heart — I knew it, I, would be saved.

I don’t think any of us knew that we would look back on these junior transitions and think, how simple, how small, compared to the ones life now challenges us with. As we move through adult time and space, perhaps the most difficult is when people transition in and out of our lives. This letting in, and letting go. Maybe that’s what they were trying to teach us all along.

They armed us with experience. I carry it up and down today’s stairs. I’m still learning.

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Fresh.

I suppose it took us a bit to make the transition. She was our first teacher who wore her hair down. Perhaps even the first to wear pants. She was young and beautiful. Our elementary school equilibrium had to date been neatly tucked in pencil skirts and bunned hair. But not Miss Green. We could smell it, this, her “fresh” out of university. 

But we were open. As open as the first team room in Washington Elementary. We played Jackson 5 records on the phonograph before class. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and we listened. She sent us off on “spelling trips” around the globe. We had to write stories together. In groups we created inclusive adventures. Each journey was dependent on every member. And we were hooked. 

We pledged allegiance to the flag, but mostly to her, to our class, and to each other. So when she came to us (Barb, Wendy, Lori and me) one morning and encouraged us to “Be nice to Danny today,” we didn’t question it. We didn’t ask why, or what was wrong. We just did it. Without our knowledge or permission, she had slipped it in, this lesson of empathy. We didn’t even have the word for it then, but we had the ability. She gave us that.

There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence today — AI. I believe in progress. I believe in growth. Technology. Advancement. I am not afraid of the future. But I am still sure of one thing — human contact can never be replaced. What we learned, working together, there was nothing artificial about it. And it has lasted a lifetime. 

Maybe we just have to keep learning how to learn. If we can do this, stay human while we stay fresh, then maybe we can do anything.

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Something cracked, something broken.


The first time I wore plaster was in the fifth grade. I broke my arm ice skating during the Valentine’s Day party. I waited patiently in the nurse’s office of Washington Elementary. My mom came from work and drove us to the clinic. The sleeve of my winter coat dangled from the left side as I breathed in the antiseptic smell. My mother touched my knee so I would stop kicking the bed as we waited for the doctor to return with the xrays. He clicked the black sheets into the light that hung on the wall and said, “See right here… that’s where it’s broken.” We both agreed, but I’m not sure either one of us saw it. He dipped the strips of plaster and wrapped it warmly around my arm. It was as white as his coat. “Tomorrow all your friends can sign it,” he said. Oh, he didn’t have to tell me. That was the only thing I was looking forward to. I barely slept through the night.

Maybe the teachers gave them the permanent markers. They must have. Soon I was encircled with eager fifth graders, armed with all colors of opened Sharpies. Almost high from the smell and the attention, I presented my open canvas and each kid fought for the prime real estate of my cast. 

I don’t know how we knew. But we all did. Maybe it was a right of passage. This ritual. This coming together over something cracked, something broken. It was so beautiful. It would have felt no different had they lifted me above their heads and passed me around the classroom. 

It happens less frequently now. And maybe with less fanfare. Maybe it’s because the wounds get less visible when we’re older. Maybe our collective groups get smaller. But I consider myself lucky. Blessed. I still have those people in my life who surround me with support. Sometimes with just a few words, but they fit into the prime real estate of my heart and fill it. And I am lifted, with a permanent high. 

All we have to do is be good to each other. Be there, for something cracked. Something broken.

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I am here.

In the fifth grade team room of Miss Green, Mr. Andert, and Mrs. Pohlman, we were allowed to begin. And I mean begin anything. Without plans. Without direction. Without fear. 

The janitor’s closet was directly across from our classroom. During a rainy day recess, Wendy Shoeneck, Lori Patri, Barb Duray and I used it as our office. Amid the smell of disinfectant and the wet mop in the bucket, we came up with the idea of putting on a play for our classmates. We had no reason to believe we would be good at it. We had no reason to believe we wouldn’t be… so we continued. We had no script. No decisions were made other than to just do it. 

We flung the door open and told Miss Green of our plans. I don’t remember asking, maybe we did, I hope we did, nonetheless, she said sure, and when the class convened after recess, we began. We drifted between themes of don’t use drugs, be nice to everyone, some school bus songs…I remember jumping and waving, and soon the whole class was singing. It maybe lasted 5 minutes. But you don’t need a long time to get a real taste of freedom, a real taste of joy.  

We were rangled back to our desks and the day continued with books and structure. But the afternoon smiles never left our faces.  

I had been shy for my first four grades. Some said painfully — I had never seen it as pain. When they mentioned it on my report cards, my mother always told them, “When she has something to say, she’ll say it.”  My mother never lied to me, so I believed her, and lived in my quiet world pain free. She was right, and it happened for me in fifth grade. Maybe it was due to the open team room. Maybe it was because of the open teachers. The safety of friends. Or maybe it was just my time. But I give thanks for it all. I never turned back after that. 

I have no real plan for the day. I have no reason to believe it won’t be good. I fling open the door — here I am — powered by the freedom to live my joy.

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