Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: bird painting


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In the birdsong.

Maybe nature knows, how the gifts are only borrowed. From nest to song, how it’s all impermanent. We’re given everything we need between sky and tree, but it has always been for the sharing. We were meant to live in the birdsong.

I think all creative ideas (and I’m including love here, perhaps topping the list) are like dandelion seeds floating on a summer breeze, with the bravest of barefoot children chasing them, stretching to pluck them from the blue, knowing if they don’t, there are countless chubby legs running behind and beside, willing to make the journey. And just as the summer child borrows the fleeting day, I gather the words and the paint, into the shape of love, and hope and try and pray it makes it to the next season.

Painting in a new room yesterday, brush in hand, I sang along with each stroke, the Christmas songs so generously lent to me, to us, each year. Within the music, somewhere on the canvas, I am suspended in time, in the gift of the moment. No doors of advent are opening. No rushing toward the next. I’m catch myself in the song of the bird, in a moment of happiness, and I find myself in the most wonderous gift of all. I know I won’t keep the painting. It must be shared. Chubby summer legs will be waiting.

The gift we only borrowed.
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Up there.

I credit my grandma for my love of climbing. I suppose it was her apple trees that first took me up. Low branches provided an easy first step. Of course it was no problem then to bring my knee to my chin and hoist myself up. My bumper tennis shoes slid up the bark and after arriving on my first branch, one so easily reached by my mother’s long arms, it was still my proudest moment to hand her that beautiful green apple prize. 

Each year I could go higher. Even higher than grandma’s basket on a stick that she used to pull down the apples on the tippy-top. And it was a thrill to say, “I’ve got it, Grandma,” — to show her that I could do it, I could go higher. To show her that even though she had rescued me so many times, from dark nights of sleep-overs, from the fear of grandpa’s snoring, from the dark closets of the upstairs bedrooms, from the unwanted covered dishes at the potluck, from the hidden aisles of Jerry’s Jack and Jill, and all the unknowns of Petermeier’s Funeral Home, I could climb higher. 

I could fill the paper sacks with apples. I could write Ivy in magic marker on my mother’s and give to her her favorites, the tiny sour ones from the tree near between the electric fence and the road. 

The ones who really love you will do that — help you reach higher. Maybe the only way to thank them is to keep climbing. And to help other’s do the same. 

I smiled when climbing the rocks at the Joshua Tree National Park. Not because I was getting closer to them, but because they are still lifting me. 

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With a bang!

I don’t remember not having a crayon in my hand. At least one in the pocket of my jeans purchased in Herberger’s basement. An unsharpened pencil (because why wouldn’t I use it?). Paints in the nightstand by my bed. Big Chief notebook pads everywhere. Coloring books stacked in the closet. Inside my book bag. Pencil cases from every theme park within Minnesota and Wisconsin. I suppose the scene was set from the start, in this my first act. 

The famous writer Anton Chekhov said, “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”

I may never be famous. Nor rich (in the monetary sense). None of this has ever been the worry. But I fire my “pistol” daily. I write. I paint. I create something. Anything. Because I know what I’ve been given. I’ve always known the value. I have peeled the paper from every Crayola and used it to the end. I have sharpened the #2 until my fingers were at risk of getting caught in the sharpener that hung by each classroom of Washington Elementary. I fill the pages. Each canvas. It is my privilege. My duty. My responsibility. My joy. 

Whatever it is that you’ve been given, use it. Fire the pistol. Play the piano. Weed the garden. Care for the children. Teach. Reach. Run. Use your gifts. There is a reason that they were put there, on your set, in your hands, within your heart. 

I type the words for you this glorious morning. Read them with a bang!

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A little bit higher.

I loved Mrs. Erickson, my third grade teacher at Washington Elementary, but it was clear she didn’t have all the answers. I can see, looking back, what she was probably trying to do, but still… She wanted us, as young girls, to get interested in the sciences, so she grouped us together and told us about exciting careers in medicine, geology, chemistry, why “we could even be astronauts”, she cheered. My hand shot up in the air — so eager to speak, I crossed my left arm over my chest, trying to keep my right arm from, well, shooting into space. She pointed her stick at me, letting all the words out of my mouth. “We’ve been playing it for years!” I said. “What’s that?” She asked. “Fashion astronaut. My mom and I play fashion astronaut almost every day!” She tightened her lips and closed her eyes, shaking her head in dismissal. “That’s not a thing,” she said, staring back at the blackboard. 

“Well of course it’s a thing! I know what I’ve done and hadn’t done,” I thought to myself, head hrrrumphing in my hands. My mother had never lied to me. We WERE fashion astronauts. I got ready with her each morning. As she accessorized she explained how this scarf or this necklace would put this certain outfit right over the top! Launching it above all others. We were indeed astronauts! No one could tell me otherwise. 

I took the bus home, rolling the assurance of my scarf between my fingers. I stomped down the gravel driveway and waited for my mom to come home from work. I told her everything — it all came out faster and higher than I hoped, but she had become very efficient at deciphering my “we’ve been wronged” vernacular. She smiled. “That’s the thing about being an astronaut,” she said, “we don’t really need anyone’s approval.” I smiled too. And knowing this, didn’t we just go a little bit higher!

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It starts with one.

Even though I paint them frequently, in tiny sketchbooks, with fine brushes, I’m still surprised at how small they are when I see them en route. The winged details, often too small for the tiniest hairs of my most intricate brush, flutter in the trees. Not disturbing a leaf, yet still able to lift my heart.

And then I’m not small anymore. I’m no longer, “but what can I do?” “There’s only me?” I see the heavy lifting of this tiny bird, this “one,” and I am reminded that that’s all it takes. One. One small detail. One effort. To make maybe not this world better, or even this day, but certainly this one moment in time, yes, better, right here, in the flutter.

So on this first day. This number one. This tiny number that we tried to issue in with a bang of promises. We welcomed perhaps with rockets red glare of dazzling hope. How do we sustain the magic? I step out and have to believe, that I am, we are, not small anymore. And maybe, just maybe, it all continues, with a flutter.

Happy New Year!

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Hey, Robin!

They were always happy to see her. “Hey, Robin!” Women waving from windowsills freshly opened. Kids on bicycles, spinning newly bare-legged. The mail carriers with a little extra spring in their steps. And that was it, she supposed, this spring. She hadn’t realized what was brought each year — this promise of renewal. This hope of better days. But she had seen her mother do it, from, well, this bird’s eye view. Fully nested she watched the earth give her mother an approving wink, and she knew one day she would do the same.

She couldn’t remember the day it happened. It seemed she was just flying. Underneath her mother’s wing, she soared through city and field. Darting and dancing. Oh, what joy to be in her mother’s stream. Flowers bloomed and bees sang along in seemingly endless sun. She wasn’t worried when the colors began to change. They were still lovely. Almost the rouge of her own breast. How could that be bad? So she kept flying through the dropping leaves. She hadn’t seen winter yet. But her mother prepared her as best she could. “But if we bring the spring,” she questioned, why don’t we just bring it now?” Her mother smiled, knowing she had asked the same thing. And her mother before her. I suppose everyone wonders. Why the winter months? Poets and philosophers have always tried to answer. But maybe the most truthful was her mother — who stopped focusing on the why, and only looked forward to the sweet call.

She thinks about her daily. Hears her song in each twig that she rests on. Her tiny orange heart can get away from her. And she knows she wasn’t promised spring. No, she would have to bring it. The thought heavies her wings, and she waits. It takes a winter, I suppose, for the “have to” to turn to a “get to.” But the hopeful flutter returns. She “gets to” bring the spring. What a privilege! She leaps from branch to blue, and hears the joyful cries — “Hey, Robin!”

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North-ending.

It was Mrs. Erickson who began to give us the language that matched our feelings. Up until then it had been mostly function. But here in the third grade classroom of Washington Elementary, every day new territories were explored. New emotions. She took us from fear to empathy without ever leaving our chairs. We sailed into the Bermuda Triangle, without getting wet. What a journey we had begun! 

I suppose it was this new knowledge that gave me the courage to further explore our neighborhood’s own “Bermuda Triangle” — the elusive and alluring North End of Van Dyke Road.

To prove I went there, into this great unknown, I would gather sticks or blades of grass. Certainly they were not different from what was growing 200 yards away, but I brought them back as proof of my journey, never to be questioned. A coveted score would be a fluffing cattail, or an abandoned feather — treasures of the braved passage — proof to any curious neighbor kid that I was in fact not only living, but alive! And most importantly, it did the same for my heart. 

I suppose I’m still doing it — nesting. I have “north-ended” my way across many countries. Sometimes trudging. Sometimes skipping. Alone, or hand in hand. Welcomed into hearts and neighborhoods that I could have never imagined. So I paint and I write. These are now the sticks that I gather. Each memory twigged and placed gently into my heart’s nest. My way of giving thanks. Today and every day. 

Thank you, for being a part of my journey. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!
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Aloft.

Soaring birds that wish to stay aloft without flapping usually fly INTO the wind for lift.

I suppose that’s the goal, isn’t it — a lot less flapping, and a lot more lift. And I mention it only as a reminder to myself. Oh, it’s so easy to get upset over the little things. “But they did this! – again…” and “she always does this – every time,” and “look at that, c’mon!” (So much flapping.) 

And we all know the goal. To get higher. But ooooh, those words — when someone tells you “to just get over it…” I’m not sure why exactly, but they sound like fighting words. Like it’s all your responsibility. Like why do I have to do it? Why do I always have to go higher? (Oh, that flapping!) So I tell myself in different words, be the soaring bird. And my heart stops fighting the wind, but using it. To glide. Higher. And I always feel better. Always. 

I’m so human. I learn the lesson over and over. But I’d like to believe I become the bird a little easier, a little more quickly, with each passing lesson. I hope so. Because the view! Spectacular! 

Maybe you’ve already mastered it. If so, I say bravo, little bird! And I make you this promise (me, too often here among the flappers) — I’m learning — and I’ll see you up there!

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