Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: cousin


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The grassy field.

I’m not sure we could have less in common. Our lives went in completely different directions. Literally and figuratively. Our mothers being sisters, even the name that first connected us has been changed multiple times. So what is it that connects us, keeps us cousining? I can only imagine that it all comes down to the planting of trees.

I worked at a fevered pace to finish the painting of my grandfather, so that my mother could gift it to my brother on the last of his birthdays that she would be here to celebrate. I sent her daily updates. And we were connected by the tears of tenderness that flowed between us. As his image came to life between the steady and the growth, between the rock and the trees, (where all life hovers in the grassy field) we were one. 

I finished in time. I suppose everything does. 

The first time my cousin saw the picture he said, “I remember the planting of those trees.” Of course, that must be it. Even though we grew so very far apart, we were planted. Together. We began with the steady of our grandfather, and the growth that we were all allowed. And that means something. Still. Ever. 

I remember my cousins birthday each year. Being the first of April, it’s not that hard. And when I do, I find myself wandering the grassy field in between, and I am home, ever beginning.

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After the pétanque.

I can’t go back to when they played there, these sun-kissed French boys just out of ear-shot of their grandmother, (intentionally or unintentionally). Back to when they played with sticks and sometimes fists, like only brothers and cousins can. They wrestled below and within the smells of tobacco and cut grass and stove pots wafting through open shutters.

But when we gather each year on August 15th, Napoleon’s birthday, (and one young cousin Guillaume’s), if the wind is just right, and the wine has settled, the vine that hangs above and beside the old house whispers to me, “Listen…listen to them play.” And I hear the clinking of the Pétanque balls, and the spirited calls of who is closer, with arms pointing to the ground, pleading cases, just this side of youth’s wrestle. And these now men, very grown men, are still pinkened by the sun, and the thrill of a summer that just might not end. 

And for the moment, I belong. Because the language of family is universal. And laughter and hope and joy under summer’s whisper, after the pétanque, rings loud and clear, and needs no translation. 

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