Jodi Hills

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

Category Archives: tree


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Without fuss or fury.

If the truth has to come at you like a ton of bricks, maybe it really isn’t the truth at all.

Grandpa Rueben didn’t say a lot, but when he did, we believed him. He was one of the hardest working people I ever knew, (other than Grandma Elsie), yet I never saw him labor with the facts. There was a quiet certainty that rose from his overalls. His right elbow raised from the table. His open hand began with the slightest of beats. Like a conductor, his rhythm held our eyes. Chosen carefully, the words, without fuss or fury, slipped into our hearts and minds and filled them.

I suppose that’s why today, if it comes at me too hard, I can’t let it in. It’s only noise. There are some who think if you say it loud enough, repeat it again and again, then it must be true. I still am of the belief that the real work has to remain in the fields. The truth, when balanced on the uneven legs of the kitchen table at day’s end, should come lightly, easily, ever without harm.

It only just occurred to me — they often say before you speak, take a beat. I smile. I see Grandpa’s hand gently keeping time, and my heart knows what’s real.

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The Friendship Oak

The Friendship Oak.

It is clearly chained off. Marked — Don’t cross the fence. Don’t touch. Don’t walk here. He lifted one young girl over the chain. The other daughter followed. He, on his cell phone, stepped over the chain. Past the warnings. Over roots and survival. Stomping on future growth. We couldn’t believe our eyes. We were getting in our car, just after visiting The Friendship Oak. I started waving at them to get out. Couldn’t they read? Didn’t they care at all? It has survived over 500 years, this tree. Hurricanes at their worst. Katrina even. I’m not so certain it can handle stupidity. He said, “We’re just passing through…” The one and only thing they asked us not to do.

But we do that, don’t we… Not only to nature, but to each other. So oblivious to the signs. How easily we can trample over one another. “It was just a joke.” “I didn’t mean it.” “I was just passing through…”

I know I’m guilty. I want to do better. I don’t want to walk over someone’s hopes. Someone’s dreams. Someone’’s future growth. Please let me be the one to admire. To offer encouragement. Let me see the signs, even when they aren’t so clearly marked. What if we did that for each other? Gave everyone a chance to keep growing. Be a little more friendly. Maybe, we could even gift to ourselves. (My heart smiles of green.)

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A peach!

Our peach tree, Officer Bob, (I named him Officer Bob because I always imagined him in an old time movie, cigar tucked in the side of his mouth, looking at something beautiful and saying, “It’s a peach, see….”) — anyway, yesterday Office Bob broke a major limb. We have been worried about him all spring — carrying more fruit that ever before. Each branch loaded beyond capacity. Dropping unripe fruit daily to get some relief. (When I mowed the lawn it smelled like jam.) But yesterday I guess it all became too much. One of his branches, and it was a thick one, snapped beneath the weight.

The things we carry.

It’s too self-important to imagine that this was a lesson just for me. But, none the less, it is definitely something I need to keep learning.

By nature, I suppose, I have always been one to add the weight of worry. I have improved, but I can certainly still overload my branches. I don’t think we’re built to carry. Even the good things can become too much. Maybe we’re meant to feel and release. Letting go of the bad things. And letting loose all the good – sending it out for all the world to see.

A bird rests on one of his limbs this morning. So light. Singing a song of hope. Maybe we can do the same for each other. Be there for each other. No weight added. Only song.

Worry dropped, love released, the morning winks and says, “It’s going to be a peach, see!”

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Willow.

There is an old Native American proverb that states, “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight amongst themselves.”

I was talking with my mom yesterday. She had just gone for a treatment in the hospital. She gets one every four weeks. She told the nurses about her new dress from Sundance. Showed them pictures. They shared laughs and compliments. “It’s my family,” she told me. Now I don’t take offense to this – I know I am my mother’s family – always will be, but I am forever joyed when she can find peace and laughter and support – and isn’t that what family is? – or should be.

I have always found my branches in the art communities. We have often referred to ourselves as the “land of misfit toys” – but a family just the same. Similar interests, goals, longings, aspirations — support, no judgements.

Outside of a gallery in Minnetonka, Minnesota, I used to watch a weeping willow tree. How it moved. As a whole unit. Such grace. At first sight, I was a little sad, our family had never moved like that. Oh, some branches coupled together from time to time, which was nice, but never like this. Never the whole, gathering strength in the wind. Never the whole, bracing against the storm. But then it occurred to me. I had found that flow in another place. Another family. And I was complete.

Family doesn’t need to be blood. How limiting is that? Family is family. You just have to find it. And when you do, you know it. And oh, how comforting. How beautiful. How fresh and green. What a flow. What a dance!

Yesterday, my husband and I (my newest family) visited a beautiful horse park. It was gorgeous. Barns of champion racers. Stunning animals. A strong, elegant, willow tree greeted us at the gate. Gathered in this new place, this place I would not stay, I was home. In this ever changing world, this not so ever green world, joyfully, I join in the family dance.