Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: beach


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An early promise.

Joie de vivre

I was always aware of time when it came to the things I loved. I thought I could outrun all of it. Pumping my thighs just ahead of aging. If I got up early enough, made a pact with the summer sun not to waste a moment, ran beside Hugo’s golden fields, ate my self-packed lunch in the green of the yard, read books in lakes, rode bike on gravel, hit balls on fields…then summer, (even though deep in the back of my mind I knew it would end), somehow it would always last. The promise still holds.

My mother was that summer. Maybe that’s why I still get up early, to meet her in the promise. To gather in all that I love — the “Joie de vivre” (the joy of life).

Walking on the path yesterday morning here in France, I heard the slow pop of the gravel beneath the approaching car, and I was immediately on Van Dyke Road. I wondered if my new French friend recognized my chubby hand in the gathering heat. Her “Phyllis Norton-like” wave out her rolled-down window told me yes. We both smiled as the years disappeared with each pop under her wheel. We bounced our smiles into the blue of ever and spoke the language, the hope, of youth.

Love and summer make the same promise. So I keep my end and wake up early to gather it in, gather myself in…knowing with each gravelly step, I am home.

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Wiggle room.

They say you never forget your first love. I suppose that’s why in Santa Barbara yesterday, I thought of Cocoa Beach.

My ninth grade was full of firsts. My first plane ride. My first time in Florida. My first time seeing the ocean. My grandparents had rented a condo on Cocoa Beach. It is fitting that I experienced it with them — they had given me a sea of golden grain before that —and now an ocean of blue. Perhaps they were, and are still, the horizon to my every view. 

Maybe it’s always about the people. I know it is for us. As we travel the country, the world, the memories we make come down to the people we connect with — some for the first time, some again and again. And maybe it’s because I saw my grandfather’s bare feet for the first time — this midwest farmer who fit so perfectly shoed and working in the dirt — was toe-wiggling in the the open sands of Cocoa Beach — and I thought at that moment, we, I, could go anywhere. 

And if I believe it for myself, allow it for myself, I have to do the same for others. We should all be given that opportunity, that privilege, that chance to be open, to be free, to give a little wiggle. 

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To dare the sand.

I have a rock in my shoe almost daily. Are my shoes too wide? My socks too low? Am I walking too fast? It makes more sense when I’m on the gravel path at home, but even when I’m going to the fitness room in the hotel? I have to laugh about it now, because it’s simply part of my routine, to shake out each sock, to give each shoe a couple extra bumps. 

Near the beach in Santa Monica yesterday, it made sense that I would pick up a little sand in my slip on mules. (Certainly not beachwear, but perfect for the restaurant on the pier.) (Sand is really only small rocks with a good reputation.) So, as I always do with sand, I gave my feet a little brush and allowed myself to travel back in time. Back to the first day at the beach each summer (spring really) in Minnesota. Oh, how we longed for summer. And wasn’t it wonderful to ache for it? To dare the sand just a little too early. To let it wriggle between our winter white toes and dare us towards the water. It seemed to be an exfoliant of all our winter woes, our schoolyard scuffles. It was the opposite of bundling — a release into the warmth of possibility! 

I suppose it’s all about perspective. When I think about where sand can take me, why would I ever worry about a pebble?

I am laced and ready for whatever the day may bring.

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Hop on.



I didn’t know about tides then. Didn’t know that trust itself, as easily as it came in, could be pulled away.

I saw the bikes, entering the lobby of the hotel in Long Beach, Mississippi. (Even as I’m typing the state, I can’t help but spell it aloud in the rhythm we learned at Washington Elementary.) They weren’t banana seat bikes, but my youthful heart beat as if it were my sixth birthday. Having learned the repeated lessons of adulthood since then,I timidly asked if the bikes were for rent. “No, you can just take them, enjoy them, and bring them back.” She said it so easily, smiling, not knowing the beauty of the gift — or maybe she did…

Dumping the suitcases into our room as fast I could, I raced back down to the lobby. “We’re going to take them out,” I exclaimed. She smiled.

With the first wisp of my hair, the Gulf coast became the road to Lake Latoka in the summer of my Alexandria youth. I was riding. Free. Balanced by the trust in everything. good. Because it was there that we could hop on and off of our bikes. Lean them on sides of buildings. Drop them in ditches. In vacant lots. Neighbor’s yards. And they would be there. Waiting. Ready for our return. And maybe this was the truest of freedoms. Even more than the wind in our hair, against our bare legs — this trust.

Time and circumstance has a way of pulling it back. But it can return. I have felt the tides. Even come to believe in them. Trust in their return. Trust in trust itself.

Sand sparkles the backs of my legs. And the depths of my heart. Reminding me that today is a day to hop on. I am free to believe. Balanced in love. Ever and still.

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If it’s the beaches…

Waking up to the clank of cousins eating cereal from the variety packs grandma bought, I ran down the stairs to the kitchen. There was no need to change from pajamas. Summer shorts and t-shirts were the pajamas we wore straight into the day, and back into the night. Even though we believed our summers would never end, this did save valuable time.

Maybe it was because of the example my grandpa set — he went out to work no matter the weather — or maybe it was our springing youth, but we never asked what it was like outside. Never questioned if we should go. It was expected, from them and us. We wanted to. If it was sunny, we ran until the sweat drained from our t-shirts. In the rain we hopped from barn to coop.

Wearing my smallest pair of bumper tennis shoes from Iverson’s in town, I asked my grandma during a rootbeer break if she was having a good day. “Of course,” she said, “I already decided.” I raised my eyes and shook my head in agreement. So it was like that, I thought. Just decide. I wiped my rootbeer mustache with my shoulder, and went back out into my decision — it was a good day.

The landscape keeps changing as we drive the country. This morning we wake to the white sand beaches. If it’s the beaches, I think, it’s going to be a good day, I already decided.

Once again, heaven nods.

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Someone was.

I was thirty-something when my bike was stolen. I ran up to my apartment for just a few minutes. Left the garage door open. How quickly things slip away. When I returned, it was gone. I called the police to report it. I remember thinking how casually he walked, this police officer, to my garage door. Like he saw it every day. Well… He asked for the brand and style of bike. I asked if they ever found them. “No,” he said. And then he proceeded to talk about how the drainage system in our garages wasn’t correct. So that was it? My beautiful bike was gone and we were talking drainage. He put the report in his pocket and left.

I stood alone in front of my open, improperly drained garage, and thought about my first bike. My beautiful banana seat bike that I pedaled into the ground. That I abandoned in ditches on VanDyke road. In the Olson’s Supermarket parking lot while I ran in to cool off in the refrigerated section. In the front lawn of the public library while I read for hours. On the beaches of Lake Latoka while I splashed until summer’s end. I stood in the gaping mouth of my open garage, missing much more than my bike, wanting so desperately to feel surprised. Wanting to be that banana seat bike riding girl, that girl who trusted everything and everyone.

I wrote about it — that beautiful feeling of trust — in my book, Leap of Faith:

“It was the greatest. All my friends loved it. (my banana seat bike)
But Ididn’t even need a lock for it. Nobody ever stole
bikes from the beach. It was kind of like our sacred
ground. . . and we knew that in order to get to our
sacred ground, you had to have a bike, and to take
that away from someone, to take away their chance
to fly on the way to that glorious one of 10,000
lakes, well that would just be a terrible crime, so
we didn’t do it. I don’t think I realized how beautiful life without
mistrust really was. . .How could I know?
You can’t. . .until it is taken away —
and only in those rare moments,
when you let yourself remember innocence,
can you feel the slip of beauty.”

I reread that passage often, and I think, as Joan Didion wrote in her book, Slouching towards Bethlehem, “Was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was.”

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Further, deeper…

Before I could ride a two-wheeler to Lake Latoka, my mother would have to drive me there. Well, she didn’t have to, but she did. And certainly it wasn’t fun for her. She didn’t like heat, nor the water… But still, I would tug on her shirt, as she bent over the laundry that couldn’t be done during the work week, the laundry that ate up her Saturday morning. “Please, just for a few minutes,” I would plead. I didn’t know then that it would mean staying up hours later, when she was already tired, or maybe I wouldn’t have asked, but I’m not sure that I carried enough empathy at this young stage of life. Already sweating in my one-piece sailor swimsuit, I’d smile into her eyes, and she put down the basket. 

She placed her folding lawn chair as near to the shade of the one tree on the beach as possible. I splashed and waved and swam, as the straps of the chair made a pattern on the back of her thighs. All the youth of the surrounding Latoka area screamed, “look at me!” as their heads and feet popped up through water! The most comforting thought perhaps that I’ve ever had, is not feeling the need to yell the same. Because each time I turned, or spun, or splashed, or did a trick, and then looked up, her eyes were directly on me. She was always watching. Always there. The life-line that allowed me to go further, deeper, because she, you see, connected me to the shore.  

People often ask me, “How did you have the courage to start your own business…to dare expose yourself through word and canvas…move to another country???” I suppose the answer to it all, I always had the comfort of shore.

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The Eiffel Tower doesn’t need me.

When you say the word France, people immediately think of Paris, and not without good reason.  Paris is a magnificent city. Magical really.  The Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Montmartre and Sacré Coeur. It is, as Hemingway said, clearly a “moveable feast”!  It is fashion and history and artists and writers. Coffee on sidewalks. Croissants and romance. It is Notre Dame. It is what was, and what will be again.


But Paris is not France, not all of it. There is so much more.  Today, I’d like to take you to the lengthy, rugged coastline of Brittany.  Here you will meet French people, not tourists.  Here, they will wave to you (this doesn’t sound like much, but my Minnesota-nice loved it).  Their houses, are not palaces, but they are manicured.  Each small yard is covered with flowers. I saw a woman on her hands and knees with a scissors, cutting the grass. These people are proud and welcoming. We went for lunch at a small restaurant with white tablecloths and a bowl of caramels (the taste of Brittany) for dessert. I asked the waitress where we could purchase these caramels – I loved them! She stepped away from the table, I thought maybe she didn’t understand. She returned with both hands forming a bowl filled with these delicious caramels and she dropped them in my purse. My first (non-family) gift in France.

We went to an antique store, browsed the history, our mouths filled with butter and sugar. I was drawn to a cup filled with old paint brushes. Green handles worn from hopeful hands and spotted with paint’s proof.  I held them up and asked how much they were?  He said something I didn’t understand. My husband said they were free for me – gratuit! I held them to my heart – what was and what will be.

The next store I bought a sketch pad and began painting with my experienced brushes. Together, we sat at the beach and tried to capture this rugged beauty that I had never seen before. This worn in warmth of a place, that maybe needed me to tell its story, as much as I needed to feel it.  An exchange of beauty. This is not the Eiffel tower, but believe me, this too, is France. Bienvenue!


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Remembering Corsica

Paper is one of the few materials that has a memory. If you fold a piece of paper, crumple it, it remembers that fold, those lines, that wrinkle. You can unfold it, heal it, but the memory, the mark remains. Some might say it is damaged, but I think, maybe, that it is just more interesting. I think words can do that to a book. This collection of imprints on a page, lines, dots, all embedded in the sheets of paper. This book becomes alive. Touched by hands, dog-eared, embraced. It holds the memory.

I was walking along the beach in Corsica and I watched this woman reading in the sand. As time went on, the tide kept rising, but she remained fixed in the pages. The water grew up her thighs and her focus never wavered. She was becoming part of the page. The magic of the words.

I knew I would paint her, this stranger on the beach, because she was a stranger no more. I knew her heart, also made of paper. It had been folded and wrinkled and healed, but the memories remained. And she, we, had become, only more interesting.

There were no borders between the sea, her body, the words, her heart. No borders between her and I.

I clutched the folds of my own heart, smiled, and kept walking.