Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: grow


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Ever the heart.

I didn’t have words for it when I began. It all seemed too much. Too long. And it wasn’t like I was simply out on a limb, I was gone, so far off into the distant future, a future that I could awfulize into every worst scenario. So I brought myself back. Gave myself only the space of this sketchbook. Allowing myself any emotion, but confining the worry, the fear, to about 12” of my day. Feel anything, everything, I told myself. And once I gave it a voice, without my knowledge or permission, that voice began to turn into a song. And that song calls me each day to the page, not the fear. 

And the most joyous thing happened yesterday. Looking at the bird woman, with her wicker bag at the market, birds resting on her head, I imagined her saying, “Seriously, I really need to shop faster.” And I laughed. Out loud. 

And it isn’t time making the difference. It’s the work. Giving myself a place to grow, to feel. A place where perfection isn’t required. And it’s ironic, I suppose, so beautifully ironic, that in this tiny space, I feel so gloriously free. 

It just occurred to me, maybe that’s what the heart is after all, a sketchbook. Not the place with all the answers, but beat by beat, page by page, a tiny space where we are free to feel, to learn, to grow, to become. Ever the artists of our own choosing. I suppose it’s never the brain, nor the hand, that says, I can make something beautiful out of this, but the heart…ever the heart… turning the page, crossing over to the beauty that lies ahead. 

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Up there.

I credit my grandma for my love of climbing. I suppose it was her apple trees that first took me up. Low branches provided an easy first step. Of course it was no problem then to bring my knee to my chin and hoist myself up. My bumper tennis shoes slid up the bark and after arriving on my first branch, one so easily reached by my mother’s long arms, it was still my proudest moment to hand her that beautiful green apple prize. 

Each year I could go higher. Even higher than grandma’s basket on a stick that she used to pull down the apples on the tippy-top. And it was a thrill to say, “I’ve got it, Grandma,” — to show her that I could do it, I could go higher. To show her that even though she had rescued me so many times, from dark nights of sleep-overs, from the fear of grandpa’s snoring, from the dark closets of the upstairs bedrooms, from the unwanted covered dishes at the potluck, from the hidden aisles of Jerry’s Jack and Jill, and all the unknowns of Petermeier’s Funeral Home, I could climb higher. 

I could fill the paper sacks with apples. I could write Ivy in magic marker on my mother’s and give to her her favorites, the tiny sour ones from the tree near between the electric fence and the road. 

The ones who really love you will do that — help you reach higher. Maybe the only way to thank them is to keep climbing. And to help other’s do the same. 

I smiled when climbing the rocks at the Joshua Tree National Park. Not because I was getting closer to them, but because they are still lifting me. 

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The gathering phase.

I never thought of myself as shy. I think I just wasn’t ready.

She got the first note from my Kindergarten teacher, concerned that I didn’t say much. “She’s so shy,” it read. My mother replied with a “She’s fine.” It happened again in first and second grade. Maybe third. My mother, knowing me, said “When she has something to say she’ll say it. I smiled in nonverbal agreement. Her belief was mine, and since the fifth grade at Washington Elementary my heart (which is really our only voice) has always been at the ready. I sing it loud through words and art and voice.

I don’t know how my mother knew about the gathering phase. Maybe it’s because she would have loved the same opportunity. I’m grateful that she offered it to me. She never forced what was growing, greening, becoming, inside of me. She gave it the time it needed — the time I needed — and that has made all the difference.

I think we’re often in such a hurry to get people “healed”, or to whatever we consider “normal.” And that’s mostly all for us. I know the furious speed at which we want to get over. But we all have to go through. In our time and in our way.

My friend was surprised yesterday, at the gallery in Palm Springs, how easily I walked up to the owner to promote myself. I wasn’t afraid. I smiled to the sky. I had the confidence, the voice, I can only imagine, because I had been given the time. 

May we all allow each other our moments in the gathering phase.

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Still, a rose.

We went through all of my possible names at Sephora to try to find my fidelity card. Jodi Hills. Jodi Orsolini. Jodi Hills Orsolini. Even Dominique. Nothing. (We didn’t try “Goat” like they have me listed as at the winery.) It’s the second time they’ve lost it. Well, lost is probably the wrong word. My name just eludes them. And still, I exist. I could be upset about it. It’s my skin after all. And thick or thin, I still want the make-up. Thick or thin skinned, I have to stand in front of the mirror alone and apply. And I do. And, humbly, I must say, I like what I see. And I know my name. I know who I am. 

When I was little, my brother called me Tess. Tessma Luma. Tessie Trueheart. I didn’t question it. I liked it. My friends called me Jodes. Joder. Jo-Jo Starbucks. Josi Hi. Jod. And I suppose I knew it was me, not by the actual name they used, but the sound of the call, the familiarity I heard with not just my ears, but my heart. 

I remember getting off the bus at Lee’s house to play with Lincoln and Tony. Mrs. Lee was the only mom in the neighborhood to call me Tessma Luma. I walked through their open screen door and knew I was home. 

Here in France, they emphasize the second syllable. My name is Jho-DEE! At first I must admit it sounded strange. Now it swings as easily as a screen door. 

I guess it always comes down to being comfortable in your own skin. No one can give you that, you have to hear it — hear it from the filter within. I smile at the “rose by any other name” in the mirror, and decide to have a good day.

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Perhaps, to bloom.

“I was leaving…to fling myself into the unknown… to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.” Richard Wright

My painting style keeps evolving. Along with my writing. And why wouldn’t it? With only a pocketful of native seeds, I left my small hometown, for a slightly bigger city. First 60 miles away. Then 120. Then more. And more again. Scattering from field to sidewalk. And picking up more along the way. 

My first business card was topped with their name. Then mine below. Smaller. But fitting, I suppose, as I was a mere version of myself. But I wasn’t afraid. It was my grandfather who taught me that everything grows in its time. Its place. He rotated his crops. I didn’t have the words for it then, but here they are now, so elegantly put  — my grandfather, he too, was in search of “new and cool rains,” “bend in strange winds,” and the “warmth of other suns.” 

I just received my new order of business cards — tiny blossoms of the seeds I have sprinkled here in France. Planted on canvas and in person. This is not my humid soil of youth. It is cracked and dried from centuries old. And I can feel it against my skin as I work my way to the daily sun. But it is warm. And it is my name atop the card. I am becoming more of myself. Embracing (not the promise) but the perhaps of it all — the glorious perhaps of the bloom. 

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A branch of fools.


We used to see it all the time, my favorite tree, when we went to visit Dominique’s mother. I haven’t seen it since she passed. I suppose it would be a long way to drive just to see a tree. But I think of it occasionally. It had struggled with the drought of recent years. I painted it when it was full, hoping somehow it would be the hydration needed to keep it alive. 
Maybe I’m doing the same with all of my painting. Trying to keep the connections. Families branch out. Each limb gets thinner. That’s the nature of it, I suppose. But we can remain strong. 
Some say it takes work, but mostly I think it just takes care. You just have to keep caring. Even when it feels like love’s rain has abandoned us, we keep caring. Is that foolish? Probably. But for me that’s not disparaging. When I wrote of my grandmother and grandfather falling in love —
He said, “I’m such a stubborn man, Elsie. I’m stubborn as a mule.”She said, “I love you just the same.”He said, “Then I hear you love a fool.”And he fell for her as only fools can,and the story of Rueben and Elsie began.
 No one grew things like my grandfather. This mule. This farmer. I want to be this foolish. So I keep believing. I keep painting. I keep watering the branches. I don’t have to drive by to know it’s there. Love ever remains. Ever green. Ever growing.

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The field trip.

The excitement began the minute she passed out the permission slips. Holding it in my hand, I knew that just the looping of my mother’s “I” into the ending “s” of our last name, would be the ticket releasing me from desk to bus to destination. I placed it in my pocket carefully like Willy Wonka gold, and it sizzled there until my mom returned from work. Even though the trip was a week away, I could smell the freedom fumes of the bus with each letter she wrote.

My mom liked a big box calendar. She could easily write and read appointments. For me, each date was the space for a large “X”, counting down the days until the field trip. Each morning my eyes darted from behind cereal box to the calendar, willing time to go faster.

The day of the field trip, it was only a moment between the bus ride of “I wonder what it will be,” to the return trip of “wasn’t that something!” In the familiar of our Washington Elementary desks, we spoke of it for days. And it made all that sameness brand new. Pencils and paper buzzed with energy. Had they always felt this way?

We returned home yesterday from our trip to the handmade palace. Our conversation continues. The marvel remains. “What this one man did!” “What can I do?” The taste of toast and jam. The strong sips of coffee brewed. Was breakfast always this special?

I’m handing it to you now. Passing it back to your desk. This slip of freedom. The letters have been looped. The bus is running by the curb. Take it. Give yourself the permission. Go on a field trip. See something around you. Live! Because what you willed from behind cereal boxes is all coming true — it’s going so fast! Go see something! Go be something! Even for just a moment. The fumes of freedom are wafting.

May your heart be well traveled.

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Navigating the pristine.

It happens every time we visit a museum or castle. The pristine grounds will be marked with “keep off the grass” signs (in multiple languages). With the large crowds navigating on sidewalks or paths, inevitably, there is always one person, grinning from ear to ear, certain they are the only person who was smart enough to get this camera perspective. So proud as they stand firm, unknowingly, next to the warning sign. Now I get it, sometimes the language barrier can be tricky, and I never blame children, but most of us possess the awareness to in fact “keep off the grass.” 

The thing is, we learned it right from the start, didn’t we? I remember Mrs. Strand was the first — our kindergarten teacher. And even when Mrs. Podolski replaced her mid year so she could go have her twins, it continued — this identifying the child seated in the next desk as a “neighbor.” Papers were hung next to our neighbors’. Our cubby holes were kept clean out of respect for our neighbors’. We stood in line at the drinking fountain with our neighbors. Marched out calmly in fire drills. Went to lunch. Whispered in the library. Climbed through times tables. Always beside our neighbor. 

Maybe I noticed it because I loved our house neighborhood on VanDyke Road. I loved the people. I loved knowing whose screen door was always open. Whose house wouldn’t mind an extra bike abandoned in the driveway. I even loved Mrs. Muzik’s yard with the pristine grass that we weren’t allowed to run through — because she, too, was our neighbor. And that meant something.

Today, we have the possibility to connect with more people around the world. And I am grateful for these connections. Truly. But I see how some communicate with each other. Trampling over each other. It shocks me still. I understand that things change. Washington School is filled with condos. They paved over the familiar gravel of VanDyke Road. But aren’t we still neighbors? I’d like to think so. I will go on thinking so, as I navigate the pristine. 

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Before we’re asked to grow.

He was a few years younger than us. Not that many if you counted them now, but  in high school a couple of years made a big difference. And it was those few years that made us call him Pauly, not Paul. Just one little letter, a y, to differentiate.

He was my best friend’s brother. I had already learned that bad things could happen. Not just little things like a poor grade or a sack lunch you didn’t like, but gut-wrenching things, life altering things. But they hadn’t yet. So it was not only the news that shook them, but the surprise of it all. 

And Hemingway had warned us in our English prep class. Told us how we expected to be sad in the fall, but not in summer. I could hear the change in her voice. How this brilliant sun-filled day had broken them, along with Pauly’s spine. He chose to dive and not fall off the shallow dock. And with that one impulse changed the course of everything. Changed the “y” to “why?”…and just like that Pauly became Paul.

We don’t always get to be ready before we’re asked to grow. Rarely, I suppose. But we will be asked. All. And we won’t be given the answers to the questions. But we will be given the chance. The spring.

I saw the blooming trees on my walk yesterday. And I thought of him. How far he had come from the endless days at the hospital. And I smiled because the why had returned to a y, and he was Pauly again. I touched the pink surprise of the bloom, and kept walking.

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Welcome to the garden.

I found out yesterday that I have been gardening since the age of five.

I certainly never wanted to get my hands dirty. Some of the neighbor girls made mud pies — the thought of it…. no! I constantly checked to see if the outdoor hose was working, just in case. 

My grandmother made real pies, but still, her hands… deep in the garden, she pulled and cut the rhubarb. You could see it from the dining room window. And I was fascinated that the day before, or even that very morning, it was in the ground, and now, here it sat, round and steaming, crusted, on the table.

I was asked the other day at what age I started to write, to paint. 5 years old. Did you share it? she asked. Oh, yes! With my mother. I would come out of my bedroom, arms straight out – holding it like the steaming pie I imagined it to be, and presented it. Words and paintings, I thought, were meant to be devoured.  

Mid-feast in my newest read, “Our Missing Hearts,” by Celeste Ng, I read that the word “author” means to bring to life, to grow. Like a gardener, I thought. 

She asked me if there were other writers, artists, in the family. No, I said, but there were gardeners, farmers — people with hands and hearts, dirtied by life’s abundance of heartache, challenge and joy. Teaching, inspiring, giving everything, with arms reaching straight out — the authors of living.

Each day, ready or not, we will be asked to grow, to give. The sun comes up, and says, “Welcome to the garden!”

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