Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: enough


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That’s enough.


They did the best they could to fill our minds, but it’s a longer path to the soul.

I’m sure we had a section about her — Rosa Parks. But to be honest, I’m certain we spent more time talking about our own bus rides to and from the very school that was trying to teach us.

In these desks, I had always assumed the word “enough,” was used in anger. Exasperation. “That’s enough!!!” — the teacher might say, often accompanied by a book, ruler, pencil, anything slammed against the desk. And we could be, well, exasperating for sure. We heard it from the bus driver who just couldn’t take the noise anymore as he drove us to Van Dyke Road, where parents, tired from a day’s work, said the same at the dinner table.

It was much later that I learned a new meaning. A calm, gentle enough. An enough that says farewell to the hurt, the anger, the torment, whatever it is pulling down on you. I suppose it takes a while to find this inner place. This inner peace. No bus can actually take you there, you have to find it from within. And when you do, you can say, just as Rosa Parks did, in the most graceful of ways, enough. To say with all of your mind, heart and soul, in a whisper that shouts louder than any slam, “Oh, but it is my place…” and take it.

We all have to learn it. But I’m so grateful for those who give us the examples of how it is done with grace. I have heard it from my grandmother. My mother. Rosa Parks. I painted the bookmark as a reminder. There is still so much to learn. So much to let go. But we CAN do it with grace. Enough of the name calling. The bullying. The fighting. The soul crushing, spirit limiting behavior.

Enough.

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The golden glimpse.

It wasn’t certainty, but the complete absence of the need for it. It was only a moment. Perhaps it will take even longer to explain than it lasted. But it did happen. This morning. I walked out the back door. There was no change in temperature. It felt like the world was one big room. Everything equal. I walked around the yard in my swimsuit. I can only describe the feeling as enough. I felt thin enough. Pretty enough. Clever enough. (Not because I had changed, or gotten better, it was just that everything was connected. There was no better, no worse — we all just were.) I was loved enough. Given enough. Not wanting. Nor waiting. Just being. A part of it all.

And I hope you can hear the joy, the gratitude in the word enough.

I jumped into the pool. Still the same temperature. I swam my laps in the blue that held no separation. Was it sky or water? Swimming or flying? I wasn’t sure. But it was enough. Leaving the pool, the water beaded upon my skin. Under the sun. Slowly drying. I was embraced. Framed. Just as the woman in the painting. Golden.

By the time I reached the house, it had passed.

Only to be felt in glimpses now. But those glimpses, I smile knowing, they too, will be enough. I’ll catch a flash of it, walking past her, hanging on the wall. Or maybe walking on the street. I’ll smile as she randomly strolls by, effortless, this stranger, not known by name, but by frame, both feeling, it is indeed golden — just to be — and we are enough.

I sit now within and between the labored breaths of my mother-in-law. How many more? It’s not certain. But there’s no need for it. Not now. In and out. Pausing. And there it is — the slightest smile between the gasps. A glimpse of just being. And I know it’s enough. It has been so beautifully enough.

She’s somewhere between water and sky now. Her arms, merely twigs, make a flutter. The sun is calling. She, I, we, all caught in the golden glimpse. It is more than enough.

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My summer heart.

Sitting next to the early morning window, trying to capture the brief moment of air that might still be called fresh, I slowly scroll my ipad for pictures, ideas to write about. It’s even a little hard for me to believe that I don’t plan out my daily posts. I don’t have a list of ideas or prompts. I don’t even worry about it. (Which, in knowing myself, is a huge deal.) I simply trust that it will come.

This morning, I stumbled past a few photos from winter. Bundled. Scarved. Gloved. It seems almost unimaginable to be cold. I know it will come, (we will even travel deeper into it) but I don’t waste a second of summer worrying about it. I really don’t. If only I could bottle this feeling for everything. The challenges of time and relationships. If I could just let them come and go, as is the nature of all things. If I could just be grateful for the season I’m in. And not be afraid of the ones to come. This is the goal. My goal. 

And certainly, just as in nature, I will be better some days than others. Even the fruit trees in our garden know this. I hear their leaves buzzing from the extraordinary harvest of this summer, with not a whisper given to the bareness of last year’s, nor a worry for the next. The birds sing in those branches, as if it were the first morning ever given. I listen with open window and heart, and know that I can do the same, and pray that I will. 

In my first remembered summers on Van Dyke road. I ran barelegged and armed through endless sunny days. Thinking they would never end. (But maybe that isn’t true.) I suppose I knew, but I was in the moment, and in the moment there is no beginning or end, there just is… 

My window can only open up to today. I smile into the sun and capture the thoughts that still might be fresh. And I tell my brain, what my summer heart already knows — it is enough, more than enough.

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Table by table.



We’re always told – “look at the big picture,” “the grand scheme of things.” I understand what that means and most of the time I agree, but I must admit, I can often be overwhelmed by the “grand scheme” of anything.

Every day I swim laps in the pool. Often times 100. But I never start out counting backwards from 100. I tell myself, just do twenty. And when I finish twenty, I think, well, 30 is easy, and I can do twenty easily later. So I do thirty. And slowly work my way to 50. 50 is fine for the day, and if I want to more later, I do it. And most days, I do. Et voila! 100.

This is the way I do most things. It works for me. Bit by bit. I need the tiny wins. So I let myself have them.

It wouldn’t be possible to paint a giant canvas every day. Not for me. It would take too much of my heart and soul and brain. So I make sketches. Small paintings. And it fills me. Gives me practice. Gives me joy. Confidence. Sets me up for the larger works. So I paint a small vase with a small apple on a small table. And it is complete. It is enough. I am enough. And I guess that’s where I’m trying to get to every day — where we all need to get to every day — that place where we know we are OK, we are good, we are enough.

Take the journey today. Lap by lap. Table by table. And know that you are enough. What could be more “grand” than that?

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