Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: grandma


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To shift.

I was still riding my banana seat one speed when Lynn Norton graduated to her adult size bike. I could hear the gears click into place as she passed me going up the hill by Lord’s house, on the way to Van Dyke Road. Between huffs I marveled at her speed. I stood up on the pedals, fighting with all of my might, all of my heart. She was barely breathing hard. “Wait up,” I panted and hoped she not only heard, but somehow could pull me along if I stayed within reach. She stopped at the right hand gravel turn and waited. Her look back was the incentive I needed and I made it. “How did you go so fast?” I asked. “I know how to shift.” I suppose it was right then that I made it part of my life’s plan. 

Being right handed, I have recently finished all the right hand pages of my very large sketch book. There was a choice to be made. Forget half the book, or shift. I purchased the vellum sheets to protect the completed work. Are they a guarantee? No. Of course there is risk. And part of my brain says that something bad could happen, but the loudest voice in the room, my pumping heart, says to go on. What if something great happens!  What if on these left handed pages, you create a masterpiece?!!!!

Two summers after Lynn beat me up the hill, I too had an adult size bike. Three gears! Mastering those, I graduated to 10 speeds. Then twelve. It took all those gears and more for me to go to college. To take chances. To become an artist. To write books. To fall in love. To move to another country. To face today. I am not afraid. With the confidence of the oldest Norton girl, I look in the mirror and claim, “I know how to shift!” 

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In the twirl.

Sometimes I have more patience with a batch of cookies than I do myself. That doesn’t seem right. 

I was always amazed that my grandma never measured anything. A rule follower from Mrs. Strand’s kindergarten class, I just didn’t understand. I put my head down on the desk when she asked. Raised my hand before speaking, and even drank the milk that made me gag. But then in Grandma Elsie’s kitchen, flour and sugar flew with wild abandon and I found myself caught up in the twirl. Still a bit uncertain, I would ask, “But what if it isn’t right?” “Then I’ll know soon enough,” she said. 

I wanted it — whatever that was — confidence, experience, trust, or maybe a combination of all it. Making the cookies yesterday, I found myself once again in the twirl. I made a test cookie to get to my “soon enough.” It was perfect and I finished the batch. 

The years have given me the strength to brave the twirl. To let go the worry of what if it’s not right, or good enough, but to simply try. I can feel the trust in my Elsie hands and kitchen heart. I feed my soul. And I taste this life. 

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Sink side.

It was mostly on the major holidays, special occasions like weddings or funerals, and then the random calling of summer’s sun on the front lawn of my grandparents’ farm. People wandered in, as if on a Hvezda pilgrimage. Separating from front room to garage. I would tug at my mother’s blouse, raising a tiny fist in the direction of the unknown, (told that it wasn’t polite to point) driven by the desire to find out who these people were. Some turned out to be cousins. Others with labels of “step” or “half.” Some just neighbors lost or hungry. 

I learned fairly quickly the real story was not with the others, but the ones I thought I knew. I had seen most in their own environments. In the homes they had made since leaving this farm. But something changed as they gathered. I could see it in my aunts, even my own mother. I had yet to read Thomas Wolfe, so I still imagined you could walk through that swinging screen door unchanged. 

But experience changes your laughter, the shape of your tears. Your gait through the gate.

I suppose I was always watching. Not afraid. Just interested. And wondering. How would I maneuver the doors ahead? It seemed to me, we were all on this constant journey home. All.  Maybe I was able to watch because of the sturdiness of my grandma. She stood sink side, without judgement. And welcomed. Where I would go was, still is, uncertain, but it was always clear who I wanted to become. 

I stand sink side, knowing we all make our way home differently.

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Only the weak are cruel.

I watched her pull it off the shelf in our basement apartment. She’d sit beneath the garden window to get the sliver of light offered, turning the pages of the Leo Buscaglia book, each word a simple prayer for courage. I knew she was always worried that she wasn’t brave enough, strong enough, but even in that tiny sliver, I could see differently. For hadn’t she written it herself on the sticky note, after reading the sentence over and over. Hadn’t she risen from the chair, gone to the drawer under the phone, tested three pens, and finally rewrote the words, “ Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”  She went back to reading. I pulled the kitchen chair in front of the cupboard and read the words that hung from the phone’s receiver (that hang in my heart still). Gentleness bounced from room to room on Jefferson Street. 

I’m sure at some point she had learned it from her father. Didn’t he display that same gentle strength in farm light. But it’s good to be reminded. In book, on sticky notes, in the glance of the common good. So I write the words in different forms to remind myself. To maybe remind you, with a gentle bounce of kindness, a never ending prayer for strength. 

Mom.
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Becoming bird.

“Women in pain become birds.” I just read that. I often find myself looking around for the cameras that are surely filming me in this episode. And as I flutter through the inexplicable planned randomness of the page, I think, yes, but not in the way the author meant — small. No, I think women do become birds, but there is beautiful strength in that. A grandness of sky. Adapting in mid flight. Hovering. Not avoiding the breeze, but feeling it. Using it. All while dressed and feathered. 

I say this, not in praise of my own wings, but marveling at those before me. I have been nested and pushed by the best. Elsied and Ivyed into the blue. Words like small were replaced with capable, and I learned to fly. 

It’s not to say that days won’t be fragile. That we won’t be fragile. But we have been given everything we need. Mostly love.

I wrote it long ago. The truth of it still lifts me.  “She believed in the pure randomness of it all. It could happen to anyone at any time, pain, happiness, confusion, even love.” 

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Elsie’s kitchen.

The Christmas carcass became yesterday’s soup. Aproned and worry-free, I Grandma Elsied my way through the process. Adding everything. Measuring nothing. And it was delicious. Steeped with holiday and attention, it tasted rich and full, but for me, the added pleasure, satisfaction, joy, came with nothing being wasted. 

I try to practice it — this making use. A scrap of metal turned into a frame. Discarded wood into panels. Yesterday’s still fresh oil paint into tomorrow’s tableau. And to me it’s all important, but I hope I pay the same attention to living. Using everything I have. Every speck of courage, because we’ll get more tomorrow. Loving with every piece of my heart, knowing it means nothing left inside. And perhaps it’s not as easy as pot to stove, but I was taught to attempt in Elsie’s kitchen. To abandon worry and just create. 

She’s smiling over my soup bowls, but more over, my heart. Telling me daily to give it all, and just become. 

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Along with my shoulders.

There wasn’t a hard edge on her. Not fingers, nor elbows, nor knees. She was built to make a lap, cup the small of a back, wipe a tear, widen a smile. She held. She gave. She touched. This was my grandma Elsie. 

Sometimes I have to apologize to her, and myself, for carrying my shoulders just a little too high. What am I braced for that couldn’t more easily roll off and on by, if I only relaxed them down. It feels so good when I do. My neck wanders freely, softening my face, releasing my cheeks that smile and say, “what a relief!” 

As I work in my sketchbook, I remind myself. The blending of rouge and flesh. Whites, yellows and greens. No hard edges. Wondering to myself, “Does that man appearing know that I am Elsie-ing his face?”  I lay the brush down, along with my shoulders, and know, she is gently and ever teaching me. Thank you, Grandma.

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Whispered.

The noise was constant. Children and pans. Even the overalls and coats that hung by the furnace seemed to hum. So it was something to hear it — how the upstairs bedroom closets whispered. I could crawl all the way inside and shut the door. Armed with only admiration, curiosity, and my grandfather’s flashlight, I opened the boxes. It wasn’t forbidden — mostly out of lack of time, I suppose. My grandmother had too many things to do. How could she keep track of every child and all those eager thumbs, thumbing through her past. 

It wasn’t a lot, when you think of the years that had passed. A few coats and hats. A fox stole. I had to imagine her once this small — before her belly had grandma-ed behind the aprons. To rub the fur was to awaken the genie, and I could see her, clutching her imaginary pearls, blushing at a boy behind the Alexandria hotel. 

And I thought how she must have loved us, the pure thought of us, to trade in all those whispers for the never ending noise. I closed up everything with the admiration it deserved and creaked my way down the steps to the kitchen. I got face deep in her softened belly and hugged her. “What’s that now?” She asked. I curled my pointer finger in motion, asking her to bend her ear to my mouth. It seemed too pedestrian to shout it over the din. She wiped her hands on her thighs and bent down. I whispered in her ear, “Thanks for loving me.” She smiled. Kissed the top of my head. And the spoons clanked on. 

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All the arms around me.

The bisous is nice — a kiss on both cheeks — but for me, it will never replace a good hug. I have the imprints on my heart. I can tell you the progression through the years of my grandmother’s hug. The first I can remember were mostly knees. Then I was sticky faced against her apron (maybe because of me, or maybe because of the apron). She was pillowy. And welcoming. Pulling me in so close, I was almost behind her. And then there was the angled structure of my grandfather. Firm and elbowed. Offering the blessed assurance of “I’ll be here, strong, a foot in each furrow.” And then there was my mother. I knew every inch of her. Where my head could rest. Where my mind could wander. The home of every embrace. The feel of each blouse and sweater, hugged so closely, as if to wear the same. And didn’t we wear them together, our sleeved hearts, through every fashion lay-a-wayed and purchased. 

This is to be hugged.

It’s not our culture here in France. But it is happening. Slowly. And isn’t it beautiful, that without pattern, knowledge or language even, we can teach each other how we need to be loved. 

Ever since I painted his picture, Dominique’s cousin, he has hugged the stuffing out of me.  Such a joyful surprise from this man of French measure. Nearly lifting me off the ground. A melding of imprints. Strength and joy and tenderness. All the arms around me now, I paint my way home. 

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The wave of welcoming.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough people to feed. Yet she never seemed to mind when neighbors (neighbors whose houses could not even be seen beyond the fields) popped over at the first waft of the oven’s scent. Her wide knuckled hands waved off the intrusion and welcomed them to the kitchen table.

On the rare occasion that her lap was open, (usually during Days of Our Lives), I would sit and twirl her thinning wedding band. Still able to move at the base of her finger, I knew she would never be able to get it over the middle knuckle. “Did it shrink?” I asked. “What?” “Your ring.” She let out a laugh that sounded like a leak of a hose. “No, my fingers got bigger.” I was shushed to listen to Ma and Pa Horton on the tv.

It makes me happy to think it wasn’t because of the work. I know now, it was the wave of the welcoming. Her hands, just like her heart, got bigger with every visit.

I felt it yesterday as I passed some cookies fresh from the oven over the fence to our neighbor. Her five year old granddaughter was visiting. She said her love for the cookies was bigger than the sun and the moon together! I felt the Elsie-ing of my hands and heart. What a welcome feeling!

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