Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: Easter


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Egg salad and lemonade.

Sometimes I worry about things changing. Of course it can be difficult. But we’re always given the tools. So when I’m in the throws of it, I just try to remember egg salad.

My first years in France, I searched for white eggs. We just don’t have them. But the Easter eggs?  How will I dye them? That problem was solved, because I couldn’t find the dye either. It took me awhile, but the answers were at hand. With combinations of water colors and non-toxic paint (and I’ve eaten enough of it through the years to know, just by licking my paint brush) I have found a way to make, what I think, are beautiful Easter eggs. 

It takes me hours to paint them. Many joyful hours. Today I will have to crack them. Throw the shells away. But that doesn’t take away the joy, it only brings on new. I like egg salad a lot. 

I wrote it before, and I’ll say it again, “I believe perfection knows no time constraints, because the time spent with you has been perfect.” 

Life continues to change. We are asked to make lemonade and sometimes egg salad. And through it all, we find, we learn, again and again, life can be so delicious!

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A whole lot of wonder!

It didn’t occur to me until I saw the Easter candy going down the conveyer belt, that the “bunny” had now infiltrated the French story. And if not the story, at least the basket. That was not the case when I arrived many years ago. I still don’t know if I have it exactly right, but the delivery system had to do with bells, and not bunnies. And the candy reflected said bells along with chickens and bears and eggs. I laughed inside at first, how ridiculous, a bell delivering candy, when so obviously it’s a bunny…on it’s hind legs…well, ok… I had to agree that both stories needed a little blind faith, and a whole lot of wonder. And I suppose that’s the key to everything.

Through the years I have inserted my own narrative into the French culture. Decorating eggs at Easter. Bringing turkey, the whole holiday I guess, of Thanksgiving. Pictures and portraits and stories. So many stories of my grandparents. My mother. I guess I just want everyone to love them as much as I do. I want you to love them. Because I think if you love them, you will also think of them, and you will miss them, and I won’t have to carry that alone. Their beautiful lives and loves will be so light, so easily carried on the wings of a bell, or the hop of a bunny. Maybe that’s silly, but don’t we have to be? Isn’t it silly to believe that love can change everything? That it can lift us? Renew us? Give us new life year after year? Help us rise up, yearly, daily, minute by minute? 

There is a weight to the world right now that is in dire need of that silly. We all could use a little faith and a whole lot of wonder. No matter how you deliver it today, may your love be light, may your joy travel far. Happy Easter. Joyeuses Pâques!

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Inside.

Before I could read a calendar, I knew the season of the year by the color of my Grandmother’s purse. The glorious shine of the white leather sack told us all it was spring. When unzipped I knew if I removed most of the essentials, that I could fit my whole head inside. I only knew this because with her attention focused on the stove, I sat on her bed and did just that. I can’t explain the need to get inside everything, I suppose I thought the love was there. So I clomped around in her Thom McAn shoes. Tied her apron around my head so it wouldn’t hit the floor. And I felt a part of it all. A part of her. But it was in the spring of my fifth year, the reveal of the white purse was accompanied by white gloves. Never had I wanted to be inside something more. I saw her slip one glove through the handles, bracing the weighted sack against her church dress, while coddling with the other white gloved hand. I envied the purse. The gloves. (In the most loving of ways.) I sat between her and my mother at Calvary Lutheran. I’m sure others were there, but how could I notice anything beyond those gloves? At one point in the service, (I can’t be sure when because I felt a little faint with excitement), she slipped out her hands and laid the gloves on her knee. I could barely breathe. I looked up at my mother for permission. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say why not. I picked them off of her lap as gently as if not to wake a baby, and slowly slipped my hands inside. I had no idea what was happening. It all felt so wonderful. Had I just become a woman? I folded my hands. I clutched them to my imaginary pearls. I held my face within the pure whiteness of all that love. And I was saved.

I never imagined for that moment to be outdone. But in my sixth season of the white purse, my sixth spring, my mother came down the Sunday morning hallway, singing her own words to the easter song, “Here comes Peter Cotton Fuzz, best little bunny there ever was…” and she hand me the basket. I assume it had chocolate eggs and jelly beans… but how could I be sure, because I couldn’t look away from the white gloves draped over the handle. I crawled inside of all that love. And I have never left.

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When angels come.

I was just a handful, a chubby handful of years older than the bunny that I found in the overgrown field next to our green house. I thought it was an ocean, these waves of green. I asked my mom if that was what colored our house. Yes, she said, always willing to fuel my imagination.  I didn’t touch it.  My grandfather had taught me that. Tell an adult, I heard in my head. I looked up and down the gravel road. Then across. Patsy was there on the stoop. Telephone in hand, stretched and tethered to the kitchen wall and pulled out the screen door. I wasn’t sure if she was an adult, but she rode the late bus, so it seemed ok. I found your bunny, I told her. She shook her head without putting the phone down. I pulled at her jeans. I pointed to the field. She wasn’t feeling my same sense of urgency. This had to be important. And it was all alone. She kept talking. I looked both ways for a traffic that was never there, and crossed back into the grass that reached my waist. Nothing looked the same. It all looked the same. Where was it? I couldn’t find it. Panic rolled from my eyes. I rode the waves. 

Why wasn’t it there? It had to be there!  I pleaded with my mom to help me find the bunny when she returned home from work. She walked with me for awhile. When it was clear that we weren’t going to find it, l could see it on her face. We never know when angels will come, or how long they are going to stay, she explained. In one swoop she took away my tears and gave me an angel — an angel bunny. It has stayed with me, all these years, through seas of green, over seas of blue, and I am never alone.

I had one of those dreams this morning, the kind so close to the light of day that it stays through breakfast. It was more of a visit really. I was here in France and saw him walking towards me — Bob Jones — a wonderful man, friend and once co-worker of my mother. He was all smiles and arms that reached out. He hugged me and told me everything is ok. She’s ok, he smiled. And I believed him — that’s what you do when angels come.

Happy Easter. 


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My heart’s pastels.

Long before I knew the months and numbers of the year, I could tell the changing of time by color. At the arrival of pastels, I knew my birthday was soon to follow. With each wink of pink and pop of yellow, I got more excited. Sure, I knew about Easter. I knew it was for everyone. But there was a little part of me, with each jellybean siting, each baby chick and colored egg that graced the storefronts, that took it as a sign, just for me. 

I didn’t have the words for it then, but I was learning there is a grand difference between selfishness and self care. 

Whether my birthday came before or after Easter, my mom always gave me a little plush duck. I named the first one Selma, and each one after. With baskets of candy all around, I held her yellow in my chubby hands and asked, “Is she just for me?” Yes, my mother said. And every year, I always asked, and I even when I had come to know the answer, believe the answer, it was still nice to hear the yes.

We are not alone. We have the privilege and the responsibility to care for others. But there is nothing wrong, with each sun that rises, to reach up your hands and hold a little bit of the day’s yellow, just for you. I carry the pocket of pastels in my heart, and it always answers yes. 

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Jelly Beans.

We often met in St. Cloud. It was half way for both of us. Just an hour for each. We tried on clothes. Praised our figures. Three-way laughed in mirrors. Had lunch slowly. Splurging with a glass of wine, while going over what we did or didn’t buy. Then lattes at Caribou or Barnes and Noble. And if the season provided, off we went to Walgreens to get the candy of choice, like Jelly Bird Eggs this time of year. 

Loosened, comforted, caffeinated, she headed north and I headed south. It was less than half an hour before I called her at the designated mark on the freeway. Pleasureland. I think they sold motorhomes. I just liked the name. When she picked up her cell phone, I got to say, “I’ve reached Pleasureland.” “I’m still lonesome,” she said. “Me too.” Then I could hear her reach inside the sack of candy. It was glorious how love made sweet and sad the same. 

We lived through it all on that route. I wrote my first book in that car, on that journey. We lived through breakups and family members passing. Weddings. Events to plan for. Outfits to buy for them. We laughed and cried on that freeway. Gathering all of our experiences. And it all got simply blended into love.

I navigate through the laughter and tears now. But daily I hear the call. She’s telling me, “I’ve reached Pleasureland.” My heart, all glorious with love, I reply, “I’m still lonesome.” She replies, “Have a jelly bean.”

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Rabbits and bells.

I still get excited. And why not!? Everything is in bloom. There is candy on the table and kindness in the air. Eggs of many colors. Family soon to arrive. Everything feels like hope.

My first Easter in France was so different from that of my childhood. There is no Easter bunny here. They have bells. Bells deliver the candy and hide it. Not in baskets, but behind trees and throughout the garden. Bells, I thought, how ridiculous – everyone knows a rabbit… I know. I heard it too. And so I joyously rang the bell, and let myself believe. It made no difference how the magic arrived. It was there, filling the trees. 

My mother used to change the words to Peter Cottontail. As she skipped through the house with a basket of candy she sang, “Here comes Peter Cotton-fuzz, best little bunny that ever was…”  Different words. Still magic!!!

There is room in the sky for all of it. All of us. Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, or Ramadan, or just the bloom of spring. I think we all want to believe in the best of us. The renewal of goodness. The spirit of kindness. The lightness of hope. Let the message be delivered in every way possible – even on wings!

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