Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: stories


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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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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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Grounded.

In Greek mythology, Antaeus had super strength whenever he was grounded. Touching the Earth (his mother), his strength was always renewed. In combat, even if thrown to the ground, he was invincible. It was Heracles who discovered the source of his strength and, lifting him up from Earth, crushed him to death.

I always wanted to do the sleepover. But when the sun began to set, when it was time to go to bed, the battle began. It didn’t matter if it was a best friend’s house, or even in the beginning at my grandma’s house, I just wanted to go home. And home was with my mother, the source of my power. 763-5809 was the life line that grounded me. Making the call, without question, she dropped what she was doing and came to pick me up.

I suppose some would call that spoiled. I call it loved. You might think, oh she’ll never learn if she isn’t forced to do it. On the contrary. I would come to learn because of it. Secure in this love, I was able to go beyond my wild imagination. And not just physically. But emotionally. Artistically. I had the strength to dare in it all. To brave my heart and soul. To live. To love.

There are a million things, people, that try to pull us away from what we know. What we believe in. Sometimes it can even be our own silly worries that try to rip us away from the very thing that gives us strength. And I can see it. Feel it. When my feet begin to lift off the ground. When defeat feels imminent… I return to the story. I write it again and again. The love is always there. Will always be there. Invincible. And I am forever strong. 


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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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But the trail.

I don’t suppose I had yet thought of myself as a woman — 18 years old — my freshman year in college.  It was something I knew I would have to earn. (In typing this, I only just realized the nearness of the words earn and learn. Maybe a part of me knew this all along — the importance of learning.) So I signed up for my first course in Women’s Studies. 

As we began navigating through the required reading, it turned out that the history of women was really just “history.” We were there from the beginning. We weren’t just on the trail, we packed the wagon. 

One story got in deep. I think about it often — her often. They began, as most of the stories did, on the east coast. They were about to travel west. All the way west. In a covered wagon. She was already lonesome. Leaving behind her mother and father. Just a young married woman, she loaded the wooden wheels with the comforts of home. Her clothing. A little furniture. Keepsakes. Her mother’s dishes. The trail was brutal. Unforgiving. The animals suffered to drag their belongings. The wheels broke away. Mile by mile she let things go. The furniture. The keepsakes — (she cried at the irony of the name.) Dress by dress, dropped along the hidden trail. She couldn’t look as her husband coaxed the horse. The wheels clunked. The dishes remained in the dirt. 

We often measure our relationships by what is given. Perhaps we need to look closer at, not the wagon, but the trail. I am grateful for the professor who pointed this out, reminded me, but truth be told, I already had the best examples. I had my grandmother. My mother. I still do. They gave their time. Their hearts. They made each wheel-worn step with grace. Clearing a path.

I pray that’s what I’m doing with these stories of them. Of us. Learning. Earning. Making a path. Making it a little easier for someone else to travel. Hoping we can all, one day, find our way.

@jodihillsart

♬ Golden Hour: Piano Version – Andy Morris
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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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Du jour.

I never considered our family broken. What a crazy word to call a family. Was it a big fat mess at times? Sure. Of course. But none of us really wanted to be fixed. Only loved.

It was like my grandma’s kitchen. Dirty dishes in the sink. Ingredients never measured, simply added. Meals made out of seemingly nothing at all. Plates cracked and clinking. Forever a table full. A pot boiling. A dishrag dirty. In a constant state of preparation, but rarely prepared.

My grandfather soaked the last bit of sauce from his plate with a piece of bread and went back to work in the field. Guided by a belly full and ever changing weather, he too, created, farmed, something out of nothing.

We had a smaller table than the one at the farm. And quieter. Only 5 of us. And we weren’t prepared when our family of five suddenly became two. Of course my mom was hurt. I was scared. And the table changed. But we weren’t broken. We found a new way to love. To live. Our place at the table.

If you’re reading this, there is nothing that you haven’t survived. All those things, those changes, those unbearable times…you have gotten through. I write it to remind myself as I foolishly order up the “worry du jour.” As I try to “fix” it all. It’s not broken, I repeat and repeat. It’s only life. It’s only love. Take a seat at this beautiful new table.

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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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This orchestra.

I came up the staircase and lifted the telephone cord over my head so I could enter the kitchen. My mother had the 8′ cord stretched to its limit. She was talking on the phone while doing the dishes. I could tell she was talking about me. Why was she talking about me? Something about Washington school. A teacher? Was it a teacher? I tugged at her blouse. She nudged me with her hip. She said goodbye and motioned with her eyes for me to catch the phone as she lifted her chin. I caught it and climbed onto the chair to hang the receiver back on the wall.

Who was that? I asked.
Mr. Iverson.
Mr. Iverson? What did he want?
He said you have good hands.
Good hands?
Yes.
That’s it?
He said you’d be good at the vio- something.
Violin?
No, the other one.
Viola?
Yes, that’s it.
He called to tell you that?
He said you can join the orchestra if you want.

I was in the fifth grade. I had just gotten a clarinet from Carlson’s music store. No small purchase for our family. My hands were already invested. But I liked that he noticed them – my hands. Imagine that! A teacher paying that much attention. What gifts we were given daily at Washington Elementary.

I played the clarinet through my senior year. I still have it. But my hands had different ideas. They are daily covered in words and paint. They are good hands. And I am grateful for them every day. I wonder if I would have believed in them though, if people hadn’t believed in them first. If I hadn’t had teachers who invested their time. A mother who invested her heart.

I believe in myself, because they believed in me first. So I use them, these hands. Once more, again, still, ever, to give thanks, and to tell you, you can join the “orchestra” if you want.

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“I’ll take that in mauve.”

I was reminded of a story yesterday. It seems as though I’ve told it so many times, but it was fresh to her — this woman purchasing my original painting of Brittany. Brand new. And as she got more excited to hear, I became more excited to tell. She had saved some of the first cards that I had ever sold, for over twenty years, one being “Mother’s Cloud.”

This particular poem I had written as a birthday gift for my mom. I wrote the words of my heart, and hers. Typeset them artistically. Printed. Framed. And it hung in her dining room. It was Rose Virnig who came into my mother’s dining room, looked at the picture, and said, “I’ll take that in mauve.” (As if I had some stock room filled with many colors.) I looked at my mom, and asked, without moving my lips, “Can I actually sell your birthday present?” Her response, in these exact words, “Take the money, Pea Brain.” It still makes me laugh these decades later.

It’s always been personal. Every sale. Every card. Every magnet. Every book. It’s my story. And yesterday, as I was sharing with this new customer (connection sounds better) some of the stories, they weren’t just fresh for her, they were fresh for me. And I shared them again with my mother, and they were fresh for her. Our stories are as real, as new, as powerful, as we allow them to be. They can transport us in time and space, and heart. They keep us living. They keep us alive.

The conversation with my mother switched from art to shopping, (as it often does.) What was the name of that store? The one where I bought that outfit? With shoulder pads? Oh, I got so many compliments on that outfit. You know the store – at Ridgedale – all the jewelry in front…It starts with a G. My brain kicked in after we ended the conversation and I had to call back immediately. It was Gantos. Oh, yes! Gantos. And we were young and in a dressing room in Minnetonka.

I will finish packing up the original painting today and send it off to California. It will carry with it a bit of France, a bit of my mother, a bit of Minnesota, a great deal of my heart. And it will gather in her stories, of why she saved the cards that she bought in Omaha. Why they gave her the courage to move to California. Why she bought the new painting. And the story will grow. Continue. Connecting us all.

As I look out the morning window, everything seems fresh, brand new, with just a hint of mauve.