Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: apple


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Ping!

I must have knocked it out when putting on my scarf. I began my walk and noticed my earbud was missing. I retraced my steps in the driveway. Nothing. In the entry. Not there. I looked in the closet. Nothing. I decided to go on my walk and search again when I got home. Off balance for an hour, I returned to search. My phone said it was nearby. It asked me, would I like to ping it. Sure. Ping, ping, ping. I could hear a faint sound, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It led me into the closet. Still nothing on the floor. But it kept pinging. There was a duffle bag sitting there. Surely it hadn’t found its way into the tiniest of slits for the pocket. I picked it up. It kept pinging. I opened each pocket. Rifled my hand through each crease. Shook it. And there it was. What an invention. This pinging! Simply marvelous, my brain shouted. My heart only nodded, smiling, thinking, I already knew. 

I feel it each morning. The first thing I see is the painting of my mother dancing. Ping! My grandfather leaning in. Ping! Grandma smiling. Ping! The grandkids at the beach – Ping! Ping! Each leading me to the desired destination. Each leading me home. 

They say follow your heart. I believe it’s true. I used to go only by feel, but now I hear it as well! The marvelous ping of my heart!

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Fill your heart. Feed your soul. Taste this life.

Only in the painting can it remain this way. In real life, left with only a bite, it will begin to brown, decay. So the only choice is to enjoy all of it. 

I suppose it’s the same with so many things. Especially from the heart. We think we’re safe or something if we use just a little. Just a bite. But it’s just not true. We’re meant to taste it all. To give it all. And trust that there will be more. And if you’re reading this, there has been, there is, and there will be…more. 

And sure, it may seem frightening. This never changing apple on the paper, you might find security in that. Nothing will change. But say it again slowly, “Nothing will change.” 

Love is always changing, and moving, visiting places I’ve never seen, and waiting…resting with patience, feeding with forgiveness, and holding, with an ever evolving shape. Sometimes my heart aches with missing someone, something, but I tell myself again, it’s only love, it’s only love. I am not stuck on the page. I am feeling and growing and changing and all the while love comes with me. So I smile at the anger — this anger that I can feel while love keeps changing shape. Because really, that may be love’s greatest gift of all. Ever changing. Ever more. 

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What’s taught is what’s known.

Miss McCarty said the composition must be typed. This was in my tenth grade year. A year when typewriters still existed. A year before I would take typing class. A year when senior girls would type your paper for ten dollars. A year when ten dollars coming out of my mother’s paycheck (a paycheck from the very school that requested the typed composition) could rock our monthly budget enough that something else had to be denied. A year when I couldn’t bear to be that rocking cause. 

Miss McCarty was, for the most part, terrifying. I sat in the front row because I thought it would be easier “to see it coming.” Oh, there were some teenage boys that tested her, but only once. I always finished my homework. Early. And I my handwriting was neat. It was my last class of the day. The final bell rang. I sat in my seat. I had two copies of my composition, not yet due for several days. One in cursive. One printed. “You can read it easily,” I tried to explain. “No,” she said. I could feel it welling, this one tear. I willed it not to escape. It rested on my eyelash. She tidied her desk. Stood up. Starting walking to the door. I stayed seated. “I don’t have it,” I quivered. “What?” she asked. “The ten dollars. I don’t have it.” She took the papers from me. Put them on her desk. “It has to be typed,” she said and walked me out the door. The tear let go and I walked across Jefferson Street.  

I don’t know if she paid for it. If she typed it herself. But when I returned to class the next day, it was sitting on my chair. Typed. I looked up at her. She wasn’t smiling, but she gave me a nod. And it was done. 

I turned it back in with the other students. I knew she didn’t want a gushing thank you. That wasn’t her style. 

She returned the graded papers. I received an A, and a note at the bottom — “You can always find a way.” I caught her eye and nodded. 

I’m typing with my left hand and two on my right. Ever healing. Ever grateful. Finding my way. 

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An apple a day…

The apple used to be a symbol of a job well done at Washington Elementary. It was all I thought about as I handed in my paper of work. Spelling. Math. Telling time. Passing it up through the row of desked children, I crossed fingers and toes hoping that Mrs. Strand would take out her ink pad, press the rubber stamp deeply into the red and rock it over the top of my paper, marking it forever with a beautiful apple. Seeing the apple in the upper right corner of my returned paper, the red moved from hand to heart to cheeks. (Maybe that’s why they call them apple cheeks.)

I lingered in the classroom one day as all the other five and six year olds went out for recess. I saw that she had our papers on her desk. Ink pad resting beside. My chubby fingers rested on the side of her wooden desk. My eyes peeking just above. “You like the apple, don’t you…” she smiled. I shook my head yes. “Do you want to try it?” she asked. I shook my head briskly. She handed me my paper. “Go ahead,” she said, “You deserve it.” I gripped the handle of the stamp, pressing it into the rouge stained sponge. Pulled it up slowly, then pressed it down onto my paper, slowly rocking it back and forth, as I had seen her do a million times. I pulled up the stamp, and there it was. I gasped. So beautiful!

My lips were much more shy than my heart when I was five. I didn’t have the words to ask for what I needed. But she must have seen the apple panic on my face. (I pray teachers still have the time and inclination to look.) “Do you want the others to have one?” I shook my head yes. “Go ahead then.” She refilled the pad with ink, and the rest was, as I remember, just a glorious red blur. Perhaps I remember this day so well, not only because of what she gave to me, but what she allowed me to give to everyone else. My first lesson in humanity.

Maybe it’s why I love to paint the apples now. I live in the land of Cezanne. He once proclaimed, “I will astonish Paris with an apple.” I have often thought this is why I paint them. And it’s probably true. Partially. But looking back, maybe it was Mrs. Strand who first astonished me. Who showed me the power of something so simple. Rosy-cheeked still, I sit before the canvas and paint another. Hoping you can feel the magic, and pass it on, through hand, heart and cheeks. An apple a day… go ahead, you deserve it.

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Magic wandering.


“Years ago, there were tribes that roamed the earth, and every tribe had a magic person. Well, now, as you know, all the tribes have dispersed, but every so often you meet a magic person, and every so often, you meet someone from your tribe.” — Carrie Fisher


It took me a long time to find my tribe, but not my magic person. She gave birth to me. She was the one who gave me the courage to go look for the rest of our tribe.


Through the years, we have gathered each other in. You know the reflection of your heart when you see it. And oh, what a delight! Yesterday we walked into their condo, and just resting, on the coffee table, one of my books, “astonish”… welcoming us, reassuring us, we were, still, and again, home.
In this book I encourage you to “surround yourself with these people…A world of people opening doors and highways and hearts, just by living. Just by being bold enough to be themselves and to share their amazing gifts…they give us reasons every day to hope, to believe, to try.”


Keep your eyes open today. There is magic wandering.

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Becoming.

My plan today was to show you a time-lapse video of me painting an apple.  There is no video.  I’d like to say that the battery died, which it did, right from the start, and I changed it. But I guess in my excitement to start painting again, I forgot to hit the button, and now I have a delightful little apple, but no video.  So today’s offering is not a video, but a painting of an apple.  I like the apple.  I liked painting it.  You didn’t get to see it happen, but it did. And I hope somehow, in knowing the story, you can see the love in that. 


I am not the same person I was when my canvas was blank.  I have worked and blended and stroked and changed, and I have become.  You haven’t seen each step along the way, but I show you now, who I am, who I have become, and I hope you can see the love in that.  Maybe we could all do that for each other — accept  who is here today, right in front of us — and know that it took a million strokes to get here — a million blends to reach these colorful lives.  And if we could see the beauty in these vulnerable presentations of these little apples, these little and beautiful lives, then I guess it would be hard to miss the love in that.