Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: study


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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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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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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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