Jodi Hills

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

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In love’s foreward.

I was gifted a new book yesterday. I have yet to break the spine. I have not sounded out a word. Nor reread the first paragraph to make sure it serifs into my heart. I have not immersed in the scent of ink, nor clutched it to my chest. (I will do all these things and more.) But I already know I love it. 

I love it because the gifter knows me. Knows that I love to read. Knows that I live in the word. Knows how to get into my heart and fill it. This is the foreward to my read — the thing written, not by the author, but by the expert who knows what will add meaning to the content of the book. 

I see it waiting on my beside table. I smile in love’s foreward. 

You are part of my story, and it is beautiful.
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Still and again.

Maybe it’s words like belief or faith that frighten people. There seems to be an implication of certainty that can be elusive, or even exclusive. (I say that as someone who is certain of all that I don’t know.) Maybe that’s why I am drawn to the front page quote of my sketchbook — “La vie est semée de c’est miracles que peuvent toujours espérer les qui aiment.” (Life is full of miracles that people who love can always hope for.) I find myself here, among the people who love, daily. And didn’t I learn it so many years ago in my grandfather’s shadow?

Of course I didn’t have the words for it then. Neither English, nor French. I didn’t question the miracles that had to occur each year just to get from seed to harvest. The luck, the timing, the weather, the work, the radio reports on grandma’s noontime transistor, all went unnoticed by me. What I felt was the love my grandpa had for his family. This was a truth I could understand, see first hand, as he rose from kitchen table to field. Love — that’s where all the hope was, I thought, all the miracles.

When I saw the quote in my empty sketchbook, it became so easy for me to begin. I didn’t have to create the answers, only the love. This I knew how to do. I painted my first bird, warmed and secure in my grandfather’s shadow. Each little miracle free to fly to wherever needed. 

The answer is still, and again, love.

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A little fun.

If you ask someone what special power they would like to possess, the majority of people will say they would like to fly. But I think maybe it’s not so much about power, but about play. They will tell you how they would dance in the air, dart from place to place, glide over all of nature’s beauty, dive from the trees, spread their wings and call it all home. And the pure magic would not be to overtake the birds, but play along with them.

I paint them all the time, so certainly I watch them. But I was delighted to find out that perhaps they were watching us.

There is a YouTube video of a crow finding a lid on a rooftop and sliding down, again and again. And I have to smile because didn’t I, we, bundle from head to toe and wave goodbye to our mothers from the warmth of the kitchen door, grab our plastic, sometimes metal, discs from the garage, drag them by the broken plastic handles and set off for the nearest hill. And didn’t I, we, imagine, even weighed down by all that bundling, that we indeed could fly. I never imagined the birds were watching.

And maybe that’s the super power we should all be wishing for — to see others. To have some empathy. To learn. And to take all that knowledge, and simply play along. After all, what’s it’s all for, if we didn’t have a little fun?

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I could be a bird.

When I first began writing as a little girl, I guess I was in search of home. “Houses, houses, houses red, in it is a pretty bed,” I wrote for Mr. Iverson’s music class. Chalk in hand after he told me that I could place my poem on the blackboard, I proudly finished my six year old first publication, “Houses, houses, houses green, in it is a pretty scene.”

From then on, I wrote about home. I painted houses. I painted windows. Doors. It occurs to me, in an airplane above France, it’s been a long since I’ve painted any of that. I smile, because, I suppose I found it…I had been carrying it with me all along.

It’s the same with almost everything. We think we will find it out there. So busy trying to discover the place, find the answers, seek the inspiration. Looking for the who, the what will fix it all, save us. There is no there there.

At the moment, shoulder to shoulder, knees against seat, it would be easy to feel trapped. Or I could be a bird. After all, I’m actually flying. Imagine that. No room to paint wings on paper, but my heart is scattering images of everywhere I’ve been. Everywhere I’m going. And I am free. I am home. I have come to fly!


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The music never ends.

They signed up for the choir like everyone else at Central Junior High, but for three years, Gail Kiltie and David Alstead held the added responsibility of accompanying us on the piano. I never asked if they had wanted to. I hope at least our director, Mr. Lynch had, but I’m not sure. 

Maybe we all just came to expect it. We often do that in our daily lives, so busy singing we just assume others will take care of it — be the foundation. We all have our roles to play. And I suppose, I hope, that we gravitate towards them, want them, but I also think it’s important every once in a while to stop and ask. To be sure. To give thanks for the support given. To let those around us know that the gifts they give us are indeed the music that we sing. To acknowledge them for laying the notes we climb. Notes we scamper upon with such joy, under the premise “well, it goes without saying…” But does it? Or does it just go unsaid. I don’t want to take that chance. So I say to Gail and David, thank you! I say to you who read, who comment, who join me in the words I plunk on my own sort of keyboard, thank you! 

What a pleasure it is to share the music of this life. To take to heart that our pianos will not go unplayed. Our love will not go unsung. 

The notes are calling. I must scamper. 

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Comfort.

It sounds odd, but there is a real truth to finding comfort in the uncomfortable.

The process of painting starts with an unknown. You are going to bring to life something that didn’t exist before. There are no real risks in the beginning. Stretching the canvas. Gessoing. Fundamentals basically. No big chances taken. And even starting with the first strokes, you know you can always paint over. But then there is effort and time. And a decision to continue. You’re really in this now. And you feel a twinge of magic amid the fear. Will it show up again? Will you show up again? Will you do the work? And it seems long when you’re in it, but everything is really just a moment, isn’t it? For me, I like that moment. Some may call it discomfort, and I don’t know another word for it. But I don’t want it to sound negative. Because I seek it out, again and again. It’s what I miss after each completion, I suppose. But It’s why I return to the canvas again. I love that feeling of getting through. Shrugging off doubt. Not knowing, but just believing in the process. The mix of magic and work — a heart’s potion that makes no promises, and would it be magic if it did? No. 

As the newest portrait hangs on the wall, there is joy in the praise. The compliments. But I can feel it. The warning of stability. Faith’s tap on the shoulder that says it’s time. Time to chance it all again. So I start with the panel. The canvas. And my heart wriggles. Let’s get uncomfortable. 

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Forever and for always.

If I am to believe the words and paintings travel from my heart to my hands (which I do) then it makes sense to me that the opposite can be true. This gravitates me to the tangible. And I suppose that’s why I like to print out my photographs from time to time.

Scrolling through my iPad, of course I checked for my best smile, my best colors, the things that I’d like to see daily, but then I stumbled upon the picture of a note from my mother. Her handwriting. The curves that were a roadmap to my heart. The words that I still long to hear — that whisper from the photo. Signed with the name that only I called her — a connection that was ours alone. I added it to the cart to be printed.

I checked the mailbox each day. And waited. And waited again. The thin package showed itself by bursting through the back entry. I ran to open. There was another protective package inside, like ribs for the heart. I opened this one too, and slowly pulled out the photos. My lips smiled when I saw myself in periwinkle blue, but my full body beamed as I read the note from mother. And I must tell you, it felt like the first time. It was loud and rang brand new, as if she were here. And holding it in my hands, I am here to tell you that the reverse is true. Love does travel both ways. From heart to hands and hands to heart.

I only mention it because maybe you were wondering. Maybe you thought twice about writing the note. Mailing the letter. Printing the photo. Don’t hesitate. Make it all real. Say the words. Give the hugs. Keep the paths open to love tangible. Maybe then we’ll all learn to fly.

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A dance to keep.

I saw a fox on the road. He scurried off to the woods, and I back home to tell Dominique. I wonder if he was in a hurry to tell his furry family that he saw me? 

I think about it all. Do the butterflies regard me as a sign from a loved one, as they dance along my shoulders? Do the birds try to recreate my song? Have the flowers been waiting eagerly to bloom? To brush a dewy hello on my spring leg? Do the leaved trees enjoy the glint of my green ring as I swing my arms? 

I don’t mean any of this as vanity. Truly. I don’t assume the world is thinking just about me. I guess what I mean is, we all have an impact. The steps we take each day. The paths we cross. The lives we touch. And if we thought about it in this way, wouldn’t our steps be a little lighter? Wouldn’t we move with a little more grace and a little less trample? If I am love to the butterflies, just as they are to me, now, wouldn’t that be some kind of dance?! And couldn’t it continue from butterfly to neighbor? To persons across the globe? 

I guess the song said it best, “you may say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one.” I see it in you. When you join me in Rueben’s field. In Elsie’s kitchen. In Ivy’s shoes. For aren’t they but the fox, the flower and the butterfly? They are for me. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a dance to keep. 

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We must spring!

I received my banana seat bike for my birthday the end of March in my sixth year on Van Dyke Road. Minnesota’s winter had yet to let go. Yet I bundled and booted and climbed aboard. I had trained for this all last summer and fall. The baby bike that I had learned on, with its stabilizing wheels, hung from a carpenter nail in the back of the garage, waiting to be passed along to neighbor or cousin. The slush of snow, salt and gravel spit from the back wheel, leaving a streak up my down jacket. But perched on the flowers of the vinyl seat, and led by the same pink, blue, green and yellow florals of the basket, it never felt more like spring. 

I never gave a thought to the weather, nor the whether… everything was yes! I suppose it has to be. How else would we get back on that bike with skinless knees and elbows? This is what I try to hang on to. Hang on to the slippery handlebars of youth. With no grasp of maybe. Not waiting for spring, but tethering it to my waist and dragging it in. 

The countless training wheels have been passed on again and again. There is no turning back. Only forward. I look out the morning window, and know I, we, must spring!

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But the choir.

We weren’t supposed to eavesdrop. And I could understand for the phone, the party line. No one wanted to hear the wringing of our sweaty hands around the mouthpiece, or our muffled giggles. But sometimes, we were just there, in the thick of the conversation. Running in through the screen door, jumping straight into the debate over the current episode of Days of Our Lives. Hearing words like affair and betrayal. Not knowing the meaning, nor the context, desperate to work them into the next conversation with cousins. My grandma, giving me, us, the “zip your lip” signal from across the kitchen. 

So I knew the routine. But sometimes, my curiosity got the best of me, and I risked it. Surely something about church couldn’t be so bad. “What did she mean about the choir?” Now I knew my grandma, she went to church, but she wasn’t the minister. So why did the neighbor lady, sipping egg coffee from her stained cup, say it to my grandma? “Say what?” Grandma asked. “She said you were preaching to the choir?” “Oh, that’s just an expression,” she replied. “But what does it mean?” “It means ‘you’re telling me something I already know.’ You know, like the choir is always there hearing the message…and maybe the ones who need to hear it the most aren’t there.” “So why do we do it? Why do you do it?” I asked. She wiped her hands on her apron, picked up her ever present cup of coffee, brought it close to her lips, grasped it with the other hand — like it was the thought itself she was holding — lowered the cup a little and smiled, “because the choir keeps singing.” I smiled in return. I knew I had heard something special, with no constraint of the zip it sign. I ran out into the summer song. From what I could hear, all was well, would be well, on Reuben and Elsie’s farm.

Each song has wings.
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