Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: dancing


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Keep on dancing.

We don’t wear gowns in France for visits to the doctor. The windows where modesty must fly out, are left wide open. I keep a mental pile of these things I would have thought to be traumatic, just as a reminder — not unlike the sticky note above my mom’s phone that read, “What haven’t you survived?”

Yesterday, to check my lymph nodes, the doctor asked me to place my hands on her shoulders. She in turn put her hands on mine. Then just under my arms. I’m not sure anyone else heard the music, but I could have been back in Junior High at the gymnasium dance, swaying arms-length apart from last night’s worry of “would he ask me to dance.”  

And that’s how we save ourselves, I suppose. Our brains our wired to come running, sticky notes in hand. Some as proof of what we’ve survived. Others just to make us laugh. 

Is that why I love the color yellow? Because all of my original thoughts that come dancing on the original yellow pad? Or maybe that’s just another thought to distract me and remind me of all the love around me. I don’t know, but I still hear the music. So I raise my arms on shoulders, in the air, and I keep on dancing. 

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Note to self.

There is a trend of writing letters to your younger self. And I must admit I’ve given it a little thought, but as I remember back to my first class on perspective  — how the assignment was to draw the hallway in your house — and I thought, how nice, the teacher actually thinks I live in a house… I went home, (because you can have a home that isn’t a house), sat in the apartment kitchen where you couldn’t drink the tap water, looked through the living room and drew the small space between my mother’s bedroom and mine, completely in reverse perspective. I mention it because it occurs to me that this younger self already knew she saw things differently. So it probably won’t come as a surprise that I do the opposite now — it is she writing to me, daily. Each one starts off the same, “Dude…” (she calls me dude, because she was cool like that, and because I know it’s as harsh as she going to get…) “Dude,” she says, “you’ve already learned this…” “But I’m doing it all wrong — backwards,” I tell her. And she replies, a little more gently this time, in my mother’s voice, (because she, my mom, was kind like that) with the same thing my mother said to me when I brought home my incomplete assignment on perspective. I told my mom, “I did the whole thing backwards,” hanging my head. She pulled up my chin and said, “Great!” “Great?????” I questioned. “Sure,” she said, “you’re Ginger Rogers!” I smiled. I was learning perspective after all. 

There will be a mountain of things I have to relearn today, and again tomorrow, but in this moment, l look around, offer up a little kindness, and this dude begins to dance. 

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Maintaining the twirl.

I suppose it’s a lot to do with rhythm with the ones we love. 

Shari, Jan and I became best friends at Washington Elementary because of the jump rope. A simple line that connected us. How seamlessly we could move from our positions. Two at each end of the rope singing, one jumping in to the words of the song. As the song came to an end, the one in the middle would jump out and grab the plastic handle of the rope, and maintain the twirl, while the one who let go ran around, timed the spin with outstretched hands, and jumped in. The song of this playground friendship continued, never missing a beat. 

My mother loved all words. And she gathered me in, with poems, prayers and promises. Pillowed beside me, she read aloud each night. As I gained strength from the lessons of Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade teachings, I began to read along. And the lifelong practice continued. 

When she loved a phrase. A line. A paragraph from a current book, she wrote it down on a yellow sticky note and hung it by the phone — at the ready for our next conversation. The words would say, this is so me, or so you, or so us. Each letter deepening our connection. 

I started a new book a couple of days ago — “Same as it ever was”, by Claire Lombardo. Not long in, she had me wanting a sticky note. One woman is asking a clearly troubled woman in tears, how she is, and the woman stumbles out the word fine, and the other replies, “I wonder about the accuracy of that statement.” Such delight! I wanted a landline, a sticky pad and my mother. I could say I have none of these, but that’s not entirely true. I have this format. I have these words. And I share them with you. I know my mom is laughing heavenly, and the music continues, as I maintain the twirl.

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