Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: heart


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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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N-E-R-V-Y 

If you look it up in the dictionary, it has two meanings. Opposite really. Nervy. It can mean bold, or nervous. Both are probably true. And for me, usually at the same time. 

Months ago, in the middle of a situation in Marseille, feeling both, I decided to Wordle for distraction. I know there are certain starter words, almost mathematical, to give yourself the best chance, but I don’t play that way. I usually insert a word that says something about my current state of affairs, a way to insert myself in the game. It’s just more fun for me that way. So I chose the word with two meanings. Bold and nervous, because wouldn’t you have to be, I mean, are you really being bold if you’re not nervous? Is there any bravery without being afraid? I typed it in. N-E-R-V-Y. The letters turned over green. One by one. I beat Wordle. I chose the word in a single guess. It was about me. 

I three and four my way through most days. Sometimes two. Not playing the odds, but always playing myself. 

Last night, reading a new book, Apples Never Fall, there it was on the page, twice. Nervy. Had I not taken the big chance, the big swing, with my Wordle word, I would have just passed this page without great meaning. But I had taken the chance. I had bolded and nerved my way in, and found myself again, here in the words. 

I don’t want to live timidly. I want to be bold in the attempt. When I love, when I live. So when my reflection is offered back to me, I can say proudly, I was nervy. 

APPLES NEVER FALL
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Of book and bird.

She came every day and landed, not on, but near the book. She fluffed her feathers as bold as the words she imagined. If she just flapped hard enough, she thought, the cover would flip and her story could begin.

The exact day the store owner noticed her, she couldn’t be sure. She had no watch, no phone, no calendar. Just the angle of the sun. It glinted off the sidewalk’s tree, at the same time each morning and lit the way to the unlocking door of the bookstore. She watched him wheel his stack just under the shade. And she rested eager, now brave enough to be on the cover. One day he smiled at her. She gave her best beak, and he opened the book. Page one.

She returned each day to a new page. Pecked the words. Then nested them home. A month of words. A summer of chapters. Words shared. Stories intertwined. They belonged to each other now. A new story forming.

Of course he had known loss. Everyone does. Perhaps that was the main reason he opened the bookstore. To connect.

In those sunny months of bird and book, everyone began. And began again. We don’t need to be fixed, sometimes we just need a reason to turn the page. And sometimes we need help to do it. We’re all learning.

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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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Fundamental.

The thing was, you had to be a reader to even understand the advertisement. A book was always within arms reach, so when it aired in between Saturday morning cartoons, promoting books, I rose up from my “head in elbowed arms” position and got a little closer to the television. “Reading is fundamental,” they said. I didn’t bother to ask my mother. I had been trained by Mrs. Bergstrom at Washington Elementary, and my mother repeated it daily, so I raced to the bookshelf to pull out the giant red dictionary to “Look it up.” I put my index finger in the section marking the “f”s. My finger traced through the pages as I sounded out the words. Fe, Fo, fun, funda, fundamental! Important, necessary, I was in agreement with it all. I ran to the laundry room. Saturday meant cartoons for me, and laundry for my mother. Her head bent over pulling clothes out of the dryer, I eagerly tapped her shoulder. “Reading is fundamental,” I said proudly. “It is,” she smiled, still filling her basket. I asked her about her next load, working fundamental into the conversation, remembering that to make a word your own, you had to use it three times. I often went to four or five, just to make sure. Satisfied that I had gained ownership, I went back to the tv. I saw my library book there. I turned off the set. Grabbed my book and went back to the laundry room. Nothing was more necessary, nor more important than she was. “I better read to you,” I said. She smiled and listened. We both leaned against the rumble of the washer, gathered in the greatest importance. Together. 

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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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