Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: lake


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To simply marvel.

In my daily quest to swim away my summer days, I never thought of the green lillied lakes as beautiful. How easily I would have furrowed my brow and crinkled my nose, labeled it as a swamp, and pedaled with fury to a clearer body of water. I’d like to think I gave thanks for the abundance of lakes — that when blessed without weed or worry, I stopped crawl stroking long enough, even for just a moment, to simply marvel. Filled with it now, from green to blue, I struggle to explain to my French family and friends. I say Minneapolis, and they hear Indianapolis, and they say racing, and I say no, but racing on my bicycle to the any one of the 10,000, and they can’t imagine even 10, so I name two, Latoka and L’homme Dieu, and they say I’m saying it wrong (my own lake, imagine that), and they’re right actually, but I can’t say it like that, not after this many pedals, and they say but look the sea is so big, and I say there was romance in the small and we realize we are comparing gratitude, and have to laugh, because we’re old enough now to stop spinning and simply marvel. 

They renamed (or gave it back its original name) one of my favorites. Lake Calhoun is now officially Bde Maka Ska. When I first heard of it, I’m not proud that I heart stumbled. Did I crinkle my nose. I hope not, but I can’t be sure. I don’t now. The water. The blue. The sun dance upon. It’s all there. Still abundant. And the runners run. And the bikers bike. And the swimmers swim. I see the thanks in it all. And it is marvel-ous! 

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Dazzling with joy.

We were just starting out. Not making headlines, so we made them for ourselves. Walking into our collective workspaces, we would announce each other. I had just sold my first piece of art. I entered his photo lab/living room. He shouted joyfully, “Local girl makes small splash in medium size pond!” 

I would go on to sell much bigger pieces. More expensive. Even “across the pond” as they say. But the joy has never changed. To be seen, I suppose, for any size ripple, is heart-tickling. 

Not much has changed, (and I pray it never will), from that five year old girl in one of the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota, trying to get my mother’s attention from shore. Dazzling her not with tricks, but joy. I’m still doing that. Because that’s what would have impressed her. What did impress her. The fun I was having. 

I have a name for it now — joie de vivre — the simple joy in living your life. That’s all she wanted for me. That’s all I want for myself, forever, and for everyone. But I know we mostly have to find it from within. I don’t sell a painting every day, but that doesn’t keep me from going to the studio. Each day, I wade in, summon the strength from my belly, never waiting an hour after eating (who could possibly wait?), and I giggle my arms into the air, and know why I am alive!


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On fishing.

When he commissioned me to do the portrait, he was explaining how we were connected. The wife of his deceased brother ended up marrying my divorced cousin and living in my grandparent’s house. Did that make us related? Probably not, but somehow there were strands. Strands enough to fill a brush, to collect the paint, to make the portrait of three brothers, fishing at a lake, a lake that I would swim in a few years to come. None of us knowing in the time that this painting captures, all that we would survive. All of the living. All of the love. Never expecting that heartache and difference would be washed clean in the common waters of Lake L’homme Dieu. 

Barefooted and fishing — maybe it’s the metaphor for how we all begin. Innocent and looking. Docked, but never tied down. Hopeful. Curious. Maybe in returning here we can find the hope we so desperately need. The simplicity. The beauty of what really connects us. 

I suppose the words I type are merely a strand on a pole, flung out to open waters, but maybe it’s enough. I pray it’s enough. So I keep writing. I keep painting. I keep hoping. I keep living. I keep loving.

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Giving proof.

I don’t think I owned a watch until I was in highschool, so it was impossible to judge the hour’s wait after eating and before entering the lake. I began turning my mother’s wrist every few minutes to view the Timex. She shook me off like the pest I was being. Ten minutes. 15 minutes. “Oh for heaven’s sake, you’re lit up like the Fourth of July!” She motioned me to go in already, knowing the risk of me imploding on land was greater than cramping in the water. 

I entered the water each time as if it were my first. Every splash released my “rocket’s red glare,” my “bombs bursting in air!” Of course it was never “through the night” but it was my proof, proof that everything was possible, exciting, uncontainable! 

I didn’t have the words for it then, but this unfettered joy was my America. I don’t ever want to lose that spirit. I don’t want us as a nation to ever lose it. The risk of us imploding perhaps is stronger than it has ever been. But we are still free. We are still young, and ever hopeful. 

I saw this young girl at City Park in Alexandria, Minnesota. I had to paint her. She lives on the canvas. She lives in my heart. This is who I am. Who we are!

Hope races me into the deep end of this Independence Day and I raise my hands in all the promise of the joy that can, should, and I pray, will ever remain. Happy Fourth of July! 

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Night swimming.


Night swimming.

We weren’t allowed to swim at night, for obvious reasons. I suppose they were the very reasons why we did it.

I was staying over night at her house. She lived just across the road from one of 10,000 lakes. We had put on our pajamas. Gone through the list of “have you ever”s… been kissed by a boy…stolen penny candy from Ben Franklin…snuck into the Andria Cinema… all the usual questions that we knew all the answers to, but asked them just the same. When we heard her parents turn off The Tonight Show and slipper down the hall to bed, we changed from our pajamas into our swim suits. Neither one of us would ever claim ownership to the plan, it was just something we were doing. Night swimming.

There was always talk of it late in the school year on bus rides home. The teenagers would speak softly of the magic. The lure. Still in our preteens, time couldn’t go fast enough. We felt immortal, and ready to prove it at any given moment.

Our hearts fueled with Mountain Dew and no previous knowledge, we barefooted out the back door, through the yard. Stopping dead in our tracks like spiders on a wall as one of us clinked the chain from the swingset. No lights turned on. We proceeded. We thought of flashlights after the fact. Even our hindsight was dim. Each step became slower. Each night sound became louder. And creepier. The sounds of our breathing said we were both willing to turn back if only one of us would admit it. Neither did. It was hard to tell the difference between grass, sand and water. But for the feel, all were black. Toes were dampened first. Then ankles. Our hands reached out at the same time. Grabbing tightly, we walked to our knees, sure that our heads were already under water. We grabbed the opposite hands, forming a circle now. We stood still.

There is an unexplained magic to friendship. We are given the right gifts at the right time. “I want to go back,” we both trembled the words together at the same time. “Jinx!” We laughed. Hooked our pinkies together. “What goes up the chimney… Smoke!” With linked fingers we ran on bare tiptoes back to the house.

There are a million challenges that I have gotten beyond because of friends. Through the darkest times they have been there, clasping hands. No common blood pulsing through our pinkies, just trust, just love. They have challenged me. Lifted me. Saved me. I give thanks for them, for you, every day.

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To get deeper.

It was a year ago that I was swimming in Lake LeHommeDieu. It was perhaps unusually warm for a September afternoon. But what surprised me the most is how far I had to go to get deeper. 

I suppose everything seems “far enough” when you’re young. The distance from shore. What we give to each other — our family, our friends. Maybe I thought it was accumulative, giving this friendship. This love. But I’m not sure that it is. I think the more we live, the more we need to give. Every day. And not just for others, but for ourselves. 

Each year as I grew in the cold of winter, I found my summer self going deeper. Wanting to. Needing to. And sure, it was a little scary, wandering further from the safety of shore. But oh, how exciting. How joyful to be in the deep. 

In life and in love, I want to do the same — get in way over my head. Daring to feel it all. Give it all. In every shade of blue. 

It might sound silly, but I always thought the water remembered me. Remembered how far I went out the year before. Knew how much I had grown, and encouraged me to keep going. Buoying me when my feet no longer touched the bottom. 

On the hardest of them, I like to think the day remembers me as well. Knows how much I can handle. Tells me how much I have grown. Encourages me to keep going. Of course some days I’m frightened, but I learned long ago, I’m only ever buoyed in the deep.

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I can help.

I was never afraid of the water. My mother saw to that. Buoyed by baby fat and unweighted from no previous experience, I easily bobbed up and down in the blue. She didn’t buy float rings for my arms, or an inflatable duck to strap around my waist. No lifejackets, or flotation devices of any kind. What she did give me was the confidence to jump in the water and trust my own skills. And what’s most remarkable, she never let me see the fear she carried.

I was in my early twenties, living in my first apartment, deeply secure in my ability to navigate any body of water, when she told me. Just before entering the pool for the complex. I had seen her dip toes in Lake Latoka. Wade in the water thigh high. Even sink to shoulders. But it was here, in this pool of firsts that she told me she had always been a little afraid. We got her a kicker board from Ridgedale mall. She did laps in the pool. I was so proud of her. So very proud. She was worried it would be a burden for me. Nothing could be further from the truth. What a gift. This turning of tables. A gift to carry what she once carried for me. We filled that pool with laughter and joy!

I suppose that’s what true love is — this constant exchange. This lifting. This buoying of hearts. Taking turns in bravery. In strength. Celebrating the victories large and small. Together.

I have a memory of a cartoon. Black and white. Two little girls on the front stoop of a house. One day the little girl is crying. The other girl reaches out her hand and says, “I’ll help you.” The next day laughing, with the same response. This is the world I lived in. The world my mother gave to me. The world I want to share with you.

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Wearing my world.

I bought them at Ragstock in Minneapolis. A midnight-lake blue pair of corduroys. They are soft, sure. Great fit, yes. But why did I love them so? I mean, I woke up thinking about them. Excited to put them on. Even for me, that’s a bit much.

Yesterday, in a half run, eager to get into the studio to work on my current painting, it occured to me. I’ve had these pants before.

I was in the 5th grade. Herberger’s was still downtown, not at the mall. My mom bought this pair of pants for me. It was the end of the season sale. Summer was about to begin. No one wanted corduroys. Up until then, I hadn’t really thought about fashion. But there was something about these pants. The color of Lake Latoka after sunset. I looked at the tag. There was a big red slash. And I was hopeful. I tried them on. My legs slipped in like water. “They feel like I’m swimming,” I told my mother. Not a big fan of the water, I’m not sure she understood the reference, but she did understand the love of a new garment against your skin. She checked the tag, and smiled. Handed them to the woman behind the counter, who folded them, and put them in a bag, and handed them to my smiling hands. 

I wore them almost every day that summer. These corduroy pants. Even to Valley Fair with my cousins. They couldn’t understand why I would wear such hot pants on a humid summer day. “Maybe she likes them,” my aunt explained. I smiled. That seemed to be enough for them. I didn’t know how to explain that these weren’t just pants, they were a symbol of something bigger. They were a symbol of when I asked for the world, my mom could give it to me. 

I sat in front of my painting, wearing my world. Confident. Vulnerable. Open. I will never let that go.

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Further, deeper…

Before I could ride a two-wheeler to Lake Latoka, my mother would have to drive me there. Well, she didn’t have to, but she did. And certainly it wasn’t fun for her. She didn’t like heat, nor the water… But still, I would tug on her shirt, as she bent over the laundry that couldn’t be done during the work week, the laundry that ate up her Saturday morning. “Please, just for a few minutes,” I would plead. I didn’t know then that it would mean staying up hours later, when she was already tired, or maybe I wouldn’t have asked, but I’m not sure that I carried enough empathy at this young stage of life. Already sweating in my one-piece sailor swimsuit, I’d smile into her eyes, and she put down the basket. 

She placed her folding lawn chair as near to the shade of the one tree on the beach as possible. I splashed and waved and swam, as the straps of the chair made a pattern on the back of her thighs. All the youth of the surrounding Latoka area screamed, “look at me!” as their heads and feet popped up through water! The most comforting thought perhaps that I’ve ever had, is not feeling the need to yell the same. Because each time I turned, or spun, or splashed, or did a trick, and then looked up, her eyes were directly on me. She was always watching. Always there. The life-line that allowed me to go further, deeper, because she, you see, connected me to the shore.  

People often ask me, “How did you have the courage to start your own business…to dare expose yourself through word and canvas…move to another country???” I suppose the answer to it all, I always had the comfort of shore.

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Disguised in blue.

I started telling my secrets — small secrets, secrets that fit into the basket of my banana seat bike — telling these secrets to the tiny waves of Lake Latoka. They were not big waves, but they were not big secrets. And so they would roll out, back to the deep water, dark water, and I would be free. Free from carrying them.

What a relief to be free. As I got older, some secrets (or worries) got bigger. But so did my lakes. On the shores of Lake Michigan, I released more than I could carry. And again, I was free.

And when I needed a bigger tide, there was the ocean, the sea…and never have I been turned away. Each wave telling me, go ahead, I can handle it. Let me carry it.

This comfort of shore, what a gift. So I paint it again and again, to remind me of all that it has offered to carry. And for all those people, disguised in blue, who have done the same. I give thanks for you, every day.

I see you standing there, toes dug in the sand. I nod my head and smile. We both know what we’re thinking, “Roll tide!”