Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: imagination


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Further.

As the extreme heat continues in southern France, I can hear her voice. “Just sit quietly,” Mrs. Erickson said, pulling down the long black shades of our third grade classroom windows. Returning from the heat of recess under a sun that grew stronger bouncing off the black paved playground. A sun that said, “Come on, it’s almost summer, just stay, play a little longer!” But she rang the bell and we dragged our feet inside Washington Elementary. Sticky thighs against the wood seats, we wriggled and squirmed. We could barely sit, and quietly seemed impossible. “Just relax,” she urged. “Lay your heads down on your desk.” We placed our sweat-slicked hair on arms folded across desktops. The whispering began. Heads bobbing with playground secrets that needed to be released.

“Shhhhhhhh…” she said from the front of the class. “Think of the water,” she said. Living in the land of 10,000 lakes, it was fairly easy to bring to mind your favorite lake. Our heart rates slowed as she described the waveless water. The calm of the blue. The coolness, first on tippy toes. Then ankles and shins. Cooler still on thighs. We smiled flat cheeked on our desks. “Will you go further?” she asked. We shook our faces. “Whoop!” she exclaimed, “Up to your waist!”

Completely distracted now from the heat, as our ever-coiffed, nyloned and dressed teacher had “whooped” just for us. “Go all the way under,” she said. For me it was Lake Latoka. I held my breath and went down, down, down. It was so cool. “Look at everything,” she said. “The fish, the rocks…” And we did. For ten minutes we swam from the calmness of our desks.

She led us slowly back to shore. Lifted our heads. And then, no pun intended, dove into the math lesson of the day.

Whenever I think of my favorite teachers, I think of the question, “Will you go further?” Because that’s what they did for us. Daily. Took us beyond the lessons, into the living. It’s a question I continue to ask. In love, and trust, and hope, and forgiveness, in curiousity, creativity and knowledge — I want to go further! I want us all to go further.

If you want it too — maybe you can join me — all together now — Whoop!

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My precious time.

Barbie was my first (and only) friend to get Pong — the premiere “tennis like” computer game. She couldn’t wait to show me. I rode home with her on the school bus. The way she flung open the door, dropping her books, racing to her bedroom, I thought this must really be something. She turned on the small tv screen. It blinked in blue. “It takes a second,” she said. All smiles. I wanted to love it, because she loved it. After explaining the bars of light were like paddles, and the light that moved was like the ball, I enthusiastically said “Great, let’s play!” She told me that we already were. “That’s it?” I thought – I hope it wasn’t out loud, but it probably was. “Isn’t it great????” Was it? Was it even anything? “We could go outside and play tennis,” I said, hoping. “No, this is cool. Let’s stay here,” she said. The screen plunked. Boop. Boop. I was never so bored.

I was so happy when my mom picked me up. I was always happy for that, but this evening most especially. “How was it?” She asked. “Ok, I guess.” “Just Ok?” “Really kind of stupid,” I said. “So you don’t want one?” “No.” She shook her head and smiled.

The next night I stayed outside as long as I possibly could. My mom called me from the garage door three times, not angrily, because I think she knew, (she knew I knew) we were given only so many youthful suns, and they weren’t to be wasted. Our “someday” was now.

My first college roommate loved Ms. Pac-Man. She begged me every night to go watch her play in the common room. Her eyes, shiny like the quarters she held in her hand, “please, please…” she urged. I finally put my book down one night, giving in, and went to watch her move a gobbling girl across the screen. Boop. Boop. Each sound eating up my time. My precious time.

We don’t all love the same things. And maybe I took it too literally when my mom shortened what every mother said on Van Dyke Road — “Go outside,” to just “go.” Off I went. First, just in my mind. Then in books. In school. Across our country. Then off to another.

I made peach and apricot scones for the first time yesterday. I picked them off the tree outside of our open kitchen window. The wind carried the fresh scent through the house, and I carried them to the outdoor table. All the while, our Meta Quest headset that we received as a gift lay charging in the living room.

I continue to create my own world. By heart. By hand. By imagination. My youthful sun is still rising. And the wind carries the gravely voice of VanDyke road saying, joyfully urging — “Let’s go!”

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