Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: dream


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Drop the needle. 

There was a certain freedom to it – being in the girls’ gym. You might think freedom a strange word for this windowless box in the basement of Central Junior High. But certainly there were no pressures to impress. 

We cycled through the normal courses. Basketball. Volleyball. A simple change with a new set of balls. But when it came time for the gymnastics week, the whole pink gymnasium was transformed. Beams and mats. Horses and Bars. Certainly we should have been padded on knees and elbows. At the very least helmeted, gauging our limited expertise. Yet, we flung ourselves without knowledge or permission in unwashed gym shorts and t-shirts for the allotted 50 minutes. No guidance. No spotters. No inhibitions. 

The floor exercise came with a record player. We were decades ahead of the popular saying, “Dance like no one is watching,” — believe me, no one was. Dropping the needle with a scratch, then racing to the mat, we made “routines” (completely ignoring the definition of routine, because certainly these movements couldn’t be repeated, as we made them up to the music.)

We were never graded. If you could make it up the cement stairs back to the locker room, you passed. 

I can feel it sometimes. Hear the turning of the record as the day begins. And I just abandon rule and worry, and move. I get to decide. We get to decide, how to make our freedom. How to fill it. Drop the needle, and simply dance. 

And so she would dance.
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No ordinary days.

We were surrounded by it — growth. Hugo’s field rich with grain. The swamps in the North End, ripe with thickened green. Marigolds lining driveways. Lawns under the hum of walked mowers. Discarded school books on abandoned summer shelves. Tennis shoes bursting out at the toes. Yet, it was imagination that surpassed it all on Van Dyke Road. 

We were given space. An empty lot sat between our house and Dynda’s. An empty lot to do anything we imagined. What a gift this empty! What drew us to this nothing? Made us race our bikes over gravel and abandon them in the ditch just to be in this open lot? When I type it now, this “lot of possibility”,  I have to smile, because I suppose that was it — so much — a lot! — of possibility. Here we had the freedom to imagine our way out of or into any situation. Balls and flashlights. Teams and cans and bases. Forts and races. Worlds away each day, but gently tethered by a mother’s front porch call. 

The magic still holds. When Dominique asks me, “What do you want to do today?”— and I can answer, “nothing” — we both smile. And I race toward all things possible, knowing the lot.

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Showering in the Louvre.

It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming. 

Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night.  Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening. 

In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!

I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons. 

So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true. 

For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry. 

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You don’t have to blend to belong.

They tried to warn us, I suppose, with the pegs and the holes, so many years ago on the floors of Washington Elementary. And the real hint to how serious the lesson, was the absence of our mats. No, we sat on that unforgiving cement floor, cross legged, trying to rise above our sleepy, tingling thighs, to match the right peg with the right hole. 

You’d think I would have learned it by now, but there are still times when instead of picking up a new peg, (actually being the peg that I am) I still try to force it. I hadn’t done it with my original family, this trying to blend, so I’m not sure why I thought it would work with my French family. Was I round, was I square? Did I even know the words for either one? It wasn’t until I got up off the floor, stretched my legs, and became what I had already become, myself, that I began to fit in. 

We get caught up in the labels. What do they even mean? Wanting so much to belong, we blend ourselves into disappearing. And how do you become a part of something if you’re not even here? And I get it, sometimes the call of the soft mat, says just relax, forget about it, but that’s never really been my style. So I get up off the floor, wiggle the tingle out of my once bent legs, and with unmatched pegs in hand, I dance! I dance on the floor that had always given permission. And with each twirl, I let go of the who, and the what, and the why, and I just am. I joyfully am!

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Having the farm.

When he saw the painting of my grandfather he asked if we still had the farm. I paused, stuck in who the “we” would even be. I started passing it down in my head, from uncle to cousin, to second cousin, (none to whom I felt a collective we). It passed again in my head to I’m not sure, to finally, it didn’t really even matter, because, I told him, “I still have everything.” And I do.

Even a lifetime and country away, I can feel the warmth of the rock at the base of the driveway. The same steady of my grandfather. The gravel beneath my feet. The jolt of an electric fence. The smell of apples, on and off the trees. The sandy feel of a cow’s tongue. The bounce of a screen door. The scent of my grandma’s kitchen. My face against her sticky apron. The ever damp basement. Jesus on the cross upstairs. Prayed to from the kitchen table. The sewing room that stitched all nine children’s lives together. The front stoop that promised the scent of tobacco and hope. My mother laughing in that kitchen. Crying in that kitchen. Hands folded at that table. Driving away from the rock one last time, never really leaving. 

So, yes, I still have the farm. And the we is all who listen to the stories. The we is you who remember your own grandmother’s apron. Who read the words and climb upon your grandfather’s lap. We still have it all. We have everthing.

Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
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Junk mail.

I don’t like clutter. When I take something out, I put it away. So it surprises me how my online mailboxes get so out of hand. And once they get built up, I don’t go back to remove the “junk,” but simply look at the present day. Even after dropping the warnings from 99% full to 98%, I push off the cleaning for another day. 

The inevitable always arrives, and I have to clean them out. Hitting the select button until cramping. Trashing. Trashing. Trashing. All the while questioning, why didn’t I just deal with this in real time? But it does serve as a good reminder, for my own brain. 

My mother used to call them “old tapes” — a sign of her times, I suppose. Those thoughts that can plague you again and again. The now junk mail of my mind. Call them what you will, oh, how they can clutter. And I can feel it. As I think about the “being wronged,” as it plays over and over in my brain, and the warning signs come, 98%, 99%, and then the real warning, “you won’t be able to continue…” — and never have truer words been spoken. So I start dumping. Taking out the brain trash. Letting it go. And what a relief. Such freedom. My heart applauds. Even my steps feel lighter. I think we all know it will get filled up again. But I hope with each lesson learned I get a little better. A little faster at the letting go. Weeding through life’s junk to get to the promised land of only 90% cluttered. And as I laugh, my load lessons, and I walk, spring even, into the day.

My heart is well traveled.
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Grounds from the bottom of the cup.

I barely remember the steps up the side of the mountain. I was so lost in the audible story I was listening to — my feet, as they so often do, went on autopilot and carried me to the top. I was actually surprised when the view had changed, but smiled and went back into the story. It was the voice, the farming vernacular, that drew me in. Although it was set in another country, the rhythm and economy of words were the same. How many times had I heard it at my grandparents’ kitchen table? “Won’t you stay for lunch,” “At least have a cup of coffee,” (which also meant kolaches, lunch sticks, or meat-stacked sandwiches.) The guests, neighbors usually, relatives, neighbors who thought they were relatives, always said, “oh, no, we couldn’t,” and yet somehow, they always did. I was certain I could hear the beeping, as they backed their way into a full afternoon, a card game, and eventually dinner. 

Just as in the story I was listening to, the purpose of the visit was never revealed at the start. Hours could go by. I would look at my grandfather, pipe in hand, never anxious. Wasn’t he curious? Why didn’t my grandma ask them? I would tug at overalls and apron, trying to speed it along, only to be met by a shoo-ing hand that said, patience. 

I had so many questions. I always wanted to know. Who, what, why. And they seemed so content to sip on egg coffee, brush the grounds from the bottom of the cup, and wait. 

Did it come from the land, I wondered. This settling of time. This faith in the season. My feet, ever on the speed of concrete, needed, craved answers, that so often never arrived, but disappeared into a blur of afternoon pastries, and welcomed unnecessary gatherings. 

I thought of it yesterday, pausing on the peaked view. Not recalling, or needing to, each step. I was here. I am here. Now. It doesn’t really require an explanation. Just being is good. I won’t ask what the day will bring. I’ll simply open the door, and see…

Sometimes, you have to let go of what was, stop worrying about what will be, and just see…
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This is your Paris.

Ernest Hemingway said, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you…

Now we were not men, nor living in Paris, but my mother never shied us away from a little editing.

Our “Paris” changed from week to week depending on the books we read. We were lucky enough to have library cards, but mostly we were lucky to have each other, and that was always more than enough.

I suppose it was beside her in my twin size bed that I first heard her say, “Isn’t it so me?” I looked at her, her eyes twinkling in some distant light. I knew she was no longer on Van Dyke Road. She was in the book. She was not reading the words, but among them. As one who never wanted to be left behind, I knew I better grab hold of her, a hand, a skirt, anything near her, a participle dangling…as she danced among the paragraphs.

Oh, how we traveled. In clothes we didn’t own. In cities we never walked. In feelings that we knew as sure as the front of our hands. Hands that held the words that carried us, luckless as some may have seen — only viewing the backs, but even tucked under blankets, dreaming before dreams, we stood as tall as any tale could be.

You might think I am lucky to visit Paris now.. And I will agree. But it’s not new, it’s only because, just as Hemingway said, the luck stayed with me all these years. I was taught to keep dreaming, to keep editing, when everyone else said no, when some said only maybe, when other didn’t even bother to respond, my home grown mothered luck said, “Oh, yes, baby girl, you ARE lucky enough! This IS your Paris!”

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More Lillian.

She’s far too beautiful to be called Lilly, the plant in our entry. Bloom by bloom, her name is Lillian. And yes, I call her by name each time I compliment her fragrance. I introduce her to the field that hangs behind her. Tell her I will care for her with the same hands that painted the picture on the wall. It’s not unlike how I used to interact with my wagon full of dolls and stuffed animals. They all had names and adventures. As they traveled with me along VanDyke Road they learned the hazards of gravel and the freedom of travel. They dared Hugo’s field. Even helped me count the change in my pocket as we walked the mile to Rexall Drug to get a frozen Milky Way. And in all that fun, I guess I was learning. 

They say that play is how children learn, and art is how adults play. I couldn’t resemble that more than by definition. And oh, how I want to keep learning. So I paint the birds daily. I cut the wood to make the panels. I stretch canvas. And give names to the flowers and trees. I greet each butterfly by my mother’s nickname. I let myself play. Is it silly? I sure hope so! 

In the fifth grade, under the guide of Miss Green, we took spelling trips. We wrote reports on our imaginary travels. Of course we were learning how to spell. How to write. How to form sentences. Without our knowledge or permission, empathy grew for our fellow desk mates, fellow travelers, and we played ourselves into Central Junior High, a little bit wiser than Washington Elementary, a little more Lillian than Lilly.

As I finish today’s blog, I make another click on my gratitude counter, because giving thanks should be fun too.  I pass her on the way out the front door, smiling, we are both a little more Lillian!

All is as it should be.
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The comfort of shore.

Van Dyke Road separated the two worlds. It was so magical how far crossing one small stretch of gravel could take me. The back of our house faced a sea of grain — Hugo’s field. And in a way, it was like swimming, running through the stalks at full chubby- legged-speed, arms stretched to each side, creating a golden wave. Across the road though, behind Weiss’s house, was a lake. Not a big one. Nor a clean one, of the 10,000 our state touted. We didn’t swim in it. So what was the allure? It had to be the dock. 

Florence and Alvin had a big yard. Bonnie, the daughter, was so much older, that to me, she was just another adult. So there were no arms of youth waving me over to play. I would sneak along the shrub line. Roll down the manicured slope to the lake’s edge. I could hear the dock before I saw it. The wave rocked wood cracking gently. I took off one bumper tennis shoe and placed my lavender-white toes on the sun warmed plank. It was extraordinary. I have no memory of being a shoeless baby, but I imagine at some point some uncle or boisterous neighbor blew their warm breath on my rounded feet, and I knew, standing there, barefoot on Weiss’s dock, this must be exactly how it felt. I giggled like that infant and took off my other shoe. 

I braved each crack to the end. My body craved what my feet already had, so I lay down and let it gather in my arms, legs and back. My fingers danced at my side in the tiny puddles of cool water that gathered in the wood’s unevenness. I don’t know if I saw all the beauty of these imperfections, but I’d like to think I did. 

Who knows how long I stayed. Summer afternoons felt eternal. I guess in a way, they are. I can still rest in that warmth. 

I have written so many times about swimming – in actual lakes. Lake Latoka was only a bike ride away. But just out my door, front and back, oh, how my heart and imagination swam. Daily. And maybe that’s what home is after all…this ability to dream in the comfort of shore. 

The comfort of shore.
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