Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: childhood


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To shift.

I was still riding my banana seat one speed when Lynn Norton graduated to her adult size bike. I could hear the gears click into place as she passed me going up the hill by Lord’s house, on the way to Van Dyke Road. Between huffs I marveled at her speed. I stood up on the pedals, fighting with all of my might, all of my heart. She was barely breathing hard. “Wait up,” I panted and hoped she not only heard, but somehow could pull me along if I stayed within reach. She stopped at the right hand gravel turn and waited. Her look back was the incentive I needed and I made it. “How did you go so fast?” I asked. “I know how to shift.” I suppose it was right then that I made it part of my life’s plan. 

Being right handed, I have recently finished all the right hand pages of my very large sketch book. There was a choice to be made. Forget half the book, or shift. I purchased the vellum sheets to protect the completed work. Are they a guarantee? No. Of course there is risk. And part of my brain says that something bad could happen, but the loudest voice in the room, my pumping heart, says to go on. What if something great happens!  What if on these left handed pages, you create a masterpiece?!!!!

Two summers after Lynn beat me up the hill, I too had an adult size bike. Three gears! Mastering those, I graduated to 10 speeds. Then twelve. It took all those gears and more for me to go to college. To take chances. To become an artist. To write books. To fall in love. To move to another country. To face today. I am not afraid. With the confidence of the oldest Norton girl, I look in the mirror and claim, “I know how to shift!” 

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The loudest voice.

We took out our tri-fold mats and were told to lie down. Most of us were tired from the morning at Washington Elementary, but there was always someone who wouldn’t go down without a fight. He began testing Mrs. Strand by beating his hands against the mat. I turned my head away. Then he began with his feet. I sighed heavily. Mrs. Strand turned from the chalkboard to give him the raised eyebrows look. Still he kept on. I suppose I was too tired, but my eyes were always the first to betray me. I wasn’t sad, yet the tears began to flow. She walked atop our sea of mats like a holy person, first picking up the boy by his t-shirt and then placing him in the corner, smirked face first. She tapped me on my dampened shoulder asking why the tears. “It’s just all too loud,” I said between breaths. She tapped me on my heart and said, this must always be the loudest voice in the room. 

Chaos can still throw me, and I have to remind myself. I have the skills now. The self care. To quiet all the noises around us, I know I can paint. I can write. I can go for a walk. Read a book. Bake a batch of cookies. Play fashion show. Listen to my heart. Of all the things I learned in kindergarten, this has proven to be the most useful.

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Dishrags.

Other than being women I love, my grandma and my mom didn’t have a lot in common. “Mode” for my mother meant fashion, but for Grandma Elsie it would have been a scoop of ice cream on top. Perhaps because of this, my mother was long and lean, and my grandma short and rounded. They differed in the shoes they liked, the food they ate, all the way down to the dishrags they used, (which my mother often mentioned as she stood doing dishes at the farm sink while the others finished their dinner.) 

It was years before I could reach into any sink, and years after that that I understood the love of a dishrag. How could it be important, I wondered. I know now, here in France. My friend Sue makes them. They feel wonderful in my hands. And when I reach for them, to clean the pan, still peppered from my new French dish learned, I smile and enjoy the task. Truly. Not only because they work so well. Nor because I have such a friend. But because I have found my dishrag. Different from my grandma. Not the same as my mother. All still lovable. And I am home. 

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In the twirl.

Sometimes I have more patience with a batch of cookies than I do myself. That doesn’t seem right. 

I was always amazed that my grandma never measured anything. A rule follower from Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class, I just didn’t understand. I put my head down on the desk when she asked. Raised my hand before speaking, and even drank the milk that made me gag. But then in Grandma Elsie’s kitchen, flour and sugar flew with wild abandon and I found myself caught up in the twirl. Still a bit uncertain, I would ask, “But what if it isn’t right?” “Then I’ll know soon enough,” she said. 

I wanted it — whatever that was — confidence, experience, trust, or maybe a combination of all it. Making the cookies yesterday, I found myself once again in the twirl. I made a test cookie to get to my “soon enough.” It was perfect and I finished the batch. 

The years have given me the strength to brave the twirl. To let go the worry of what if it’s not right, or good enough, but to simply try. I can feel the trust in my Elsie hands and kitchen heart. I feed my soul. And I taste this life. 

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Being gull.


I never thought of gull being slang for gullible. Maybe in not knowing, that’s exactly what it makes me. But I see them, living free by the sea, and if that’s being fooled, it’s a pretty good trick. 

We have so many words for it, naive, Pollyanna, but I’m still a believer. And I suppose sometimes, even my own brain thinks of my heart as a white and gray bird near water, and yet it comes along, footprinting in the sand, knowing somewhere in all that belief and misbelief, we will take flight. I guess I don’t know how to live any other way. I have brushed away piles of sand upon sand. And still. I have averted hands swatting in the air. And still. I squawk, when others seem to know the words to the song. And still, I believe. 

Because isn’t all that blue, lit by yellow, grounded by sand, isn’t that for everyone? I think so. I still believe. I’ll see you up there.

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Redwoods.

There was a group of men helping my grandfather. I suppose neighbors. Being the sponge that I was, I listened to them during their break. I could still fit underneath the table, amid the smell of earth from boots and overalls. They drank the coffee and ate the kolaches, and spoke as if they were one of us, even though they said the name wrong. Hvezda. Yes, it began with an H, but we didn’t pronounce it. It was vee-ezda, not he-vezda, I shook my head and told the table leg. Still, they finished the plates and drank the coffee to the grounds. Joyfully. And they would come back, again and again.

I didn’t ask why. The answer, for my grandfather, was always nature. So I walked in it. I hope I still do. 

They say that Redwoods are smart enough to share with neighboring trees the water that they collect. Knowing that to hoard it would put them at greater risk in a wildfire. 

My grandparents were Redwoods. What am I? What are we?

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Sink side.

It was mostly on the major holidays, special occasions like weddings or funerals, and then the random calling of summer’s sun on the front lawn of my grandparents’ farm. People wandered in, as if on a Hvezda pilgrimage. Separating from front room to garage. I would tug at my mother’s blouse, raising a tiny fist in the direction of the unknown, (told that it wasn’t polite to point) driven by the desire to find out who these people were. Some turned out to be cousins. Others with labels of “step” or “half.” Some just neighbors lost or hungry. 

I learned fairly quickly the real story was not with the others, but the ones I thought I knew. I had seen most in their own environments. In the homes they had made since leaving this farm. But something changed as they gathered. I could see it in my aunts, even my own mother. I had yet to read Thomas Wolfe, so I still imagined you could walk through that swinging screen door unchanged. 

But experience changes your laughter, the shape of your tears. Your gait through the gate.

I suppose I was always watching. Not afraid. Just interested. And wondering. How would I maneuver the doors ahead? It seemed to me, we were all on this constant journey home. All.  Maybe I was able to watch because of the sturdiness of my grandma. She stood sink side, without judgement. And welcomed. Where I would go was, still is, uncertain, but it was always clear who I wanted to become. 

I stand sink side, knowing we all make our way home differently.

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From the flaps.

“To remain human in an inhuman time.” Montaigne

In my sketchbook, all the pages are almost absent of color. Not flesh, nor butter, it welcomes every image, and rests it gently, softly, without judgement. But for the flaps. The flaps are a vibrant red. Already set in tone, they present a different challenge. We call this an “underpainting.” The red cannot help but affect each color applied. And it can be tempting, this coming in hot. There is a vibrancy, a bit of excitement. And so it is with heart and mind. 

Sometimes, seemingly without my knowledge or permission, I find myself in the flaps. But this!  And that!  And they! Should haves and could haves and supposed tos hovering in all that redness. And that’s ok, for a moment. I try not to add to the heat of the color by beating myself up. But rather create a space, where all are welcome.  All. 

We are living in a time of red. Perhaps an inhuman time. We’re not the first, nor the last, but It is our job to remain human. To love, to create, to inspire, to preserve the goodness. To be the pages that welcome, with all the gentle might of heart and mind.  

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Leaning in.

I was just scaling the edge of my teens when my grandfather died. Too big to be carried, too small not to want to be. Of course I had seen them before. The processions after the funeral. But I can’t say I gave them any thought. No emotion anyway. Maybe we can’t, until we’ve sat in the line, the slow line that travels at the speed of grief. Each block a memory. Each intersection another line on his overalls, pinstriping the years, like colonies on the flag. My brain could only rewind the chorus from Amazing Grace. Perhaps because it was the last thing I heard, or the thing I wanted the most. 

I’d like to think I thought about empathy. About how this changed everything. I’d like to think I made plans for patience in the future — patience when paused at the green light because grief was passing. Patience to know that we are all part of the procession. It is happening to all of us. I’m not sure I did. I think I do more. I hope I do more. 

I try to remind myself. One of his portraits is the first thing I see in the morning. And even out of uniform. Even free from the furrows, he is leaning in. And I think I have to do the same. 

I lean in. My home. My heart. 

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Not lost.

Certainty rarely arrives on the first page. I started a new book yesterday. I was wafting in and around the wanting to continue, when the words tapped me on the shoulder once again and said, look, I know you’re struggling, but don’t give up on us yet, there’s a reason you’re here.

The tap came in the form of a Proust quote. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I have never studied Marcel Proust, but I am currently seven months deep into a daily practice of creating something in the sketchbook bearing his quote, “À la recherche du temps perdu.” (In search of lost time.) For me it began as way, not to get back old time, but to make sure that time wasn’t lost in worry, or woe, and replace it with creation. Joy. And pretty quickly on, he was referenced in a book, and it kept me on the journey.

Maybe the first time was for me, but receiving it again, this nod, makes me think I was meant to pass it on. I wrote this years ago, “I admire the lost who keep looking, and I am amazed by those who keep looking for the lost.” I think when we find our way, or even when we’re just on a pretty good path, we have an obligation to help others. To be like the words were for me, a simple reminder, to tell you, I know you’re struggling, but don’t give up, there’s a reason you’re here.

To my dear friends in Minneapolis.

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