Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: ice


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Number Twelve.

When I paint someone, I have to find the entry point. The empathy. I have never played hockey. And since my fifth grade Valentine’s skating party at Noonan’s Park (when the whip was cracked and I broke my arm) I haven’t spent a lot of time on the ice. But this is her love, and that’s how she wanted her portrait. 

They are a hockey family for sure. Donned in red and black from rink to bench, their passion would seemingly melt such a block. They gather in “sometimes victory” and “always attempt.” In pure love, for the sport, sure, but mostly I think, for each other. And this is where I find my way in. This is where my hands understand my heart, and I paint. 

As she skates to team with all of her friends, swirling on ice to build a connection to glide for years, I paint. Wanting to be a part of that. Wanting to stay connected. Cheering from another country, no skates in sight, I am part of a hockey family too. 

Even behind this gated face, and this wrinkled jersey, I know this number twelve. I celebrate this Charly! And we all glide together.

#12

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Open waters.

They aren’t always so clear. So when I get an obvious sign, I like to celebrate it.

I was thinking the exact same thing when he said, “I like to see the open waters.” I smiled and agreed. What was cold and white, frozen, just a couple of months ago, now rippled and danced blue under a changing sky.

I don’t know if nature is as silly as we humans. Suffering and fighting the cracks. Or does it simply release? They say we have to be cracked open, that’s where the love gets in. But each time it happens, I have a tendency to forget. Put up a struggle. And it’s not like my heart hasn’t been through the “winter months” before…found its way to spring…so why do I, we, fight it? I guess as with everything, we have to be in it to know. So for now, I will simply enjoy the water’s release into the new season. I will flow with the promise of spring and try to keep it in my memory — this nature of things.

Oh, to be open! To it all! Come spring! Cracks and all! I feel buoyant already!

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In love’s hold.

Ice will warn you. The crack that it sends up was always enough to send me running to the snow banked shore. But I still have to test it. I go on it. Every year. These frozen lakes of Minnesota. Maybe it’s the thrill of the improbable. That this water will hold. Hold me. 

I suppose it’s the same with people. Even warned and cracked, we go back in. Maybe this one will hold. This love. And sometimes you think how improbable — that you could be loved at all. Then one day, you find yourself standing on the same thin ice, year after year, with someone willing to embrace the improbability of it all, willing to test the hold, that you will love them, day after day, into each new season. 

And it’s not for the proof. Not, “if you really love me you’d….” No, that never works. There are no guarantees. And would we even want that? I don’t think so. The magic of being in love, with all of its flaws and cracks that ring out into the air, daring the daily hold together, this is nothing short of wonderful! 

I didn’t know, as we stepped out onto the ice, that they had renamed it, this Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska. Google says it was to “alleviate the pain of that history and celebrate instead the dignity of those who originally named the lake.” Maybe we’re all trying to do that. It’s all so slippery underfoot, as we try to get it right. But again, maybe that’s where the love is, in the trying, the daring, the renaming, the doing better… the ever attempt in love. 

Out on the ice, we smile together, in love’s hold.