Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: lemonade


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Egg salad and lemonade.

Sometimes I worry about things changing. Of course it can be difficult. But we’re always given the tools. So when I’m in the throws of it, I just try to remember egg salad.

My first years in France, I searched for white eggs. We just don’t have them. But the Easter eggs?  How will I dye them? That problem was solved, because I couldn’t find the dye either. It took me awhile, but the answers were at hand. With combinations of water colors and non-toxic paint (and I’ve eaten enough of it through the years to know, just by licking my paint brush) I have found a way to make, what I think, are beautiful Easter eggs. 

It takes me hours to paint them. Many joyful hours. Today I will have to crack them. Throw the shells away. But that doesn’t take away the joy, it only brings on new. I like egg salad a lot. 

I wrote it before, and I’ll say it again, “I believe perfection knows no time constraints, because the time spent with you has been perfect.” 

Life continues to change. We are asked to make lemonade and sometimes egg salad. And through it all, we find, we learn, again and again, life can be so delicious!

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Sometimes lemons.

I wasn’t planning to do it all yesterday. I thought I would just start with the jam. I made the first batch in the morning, and by early afternoon the remaining apricots said, “It’s time.” 

It being a Sunday afternoon, in France, my options were limited. I only had enough sucre spécial confiture (sugar for making jam) to create another small batch. I decided that I would make a tart as well. It became clear very quickly that I was going to have to Elsie my way through this. Within each recipe there was something that I didn’t have. Almond flour. Nope. Next. Whipping cream. No. Next. And this went on and on as the stores remained closed. I finally stumbled upon one where I had almost everything but the corn starch. Google recommended Arrowroot or Psyllium husk. If my pantry didn’t contain corn starch, how likely was it to contain Psyllium husk? My inner Elsie took over. More flour here, mixed with a dash more sugar. Vanilla, why not. And some of the jam I made that morning — of course I added it atop the fresh apricots and my homemade crust. 

While the tart was in the oven, I made another batch of the apricot jam. No apricots lost, and the house smelled of sweet victory. The thing is, we don’t always get to be ready. Possibly never. Yet, life ripens before us at a blistering pace, handing us a bowl of apricots, (sometimes lemons), and we get to decide whether we’re going to make something of it, or not. 


I’ve always been a bit of a worrier. It was my Grandma Elsie who showed me how to tweak that recipe and change it from worrier to warrior. With 9 children, “open or closed on a Sunday” would have been the least of her battles. And yet she conquered them all, ever so sweetly. 


It turns out the most important ingredients in a French tart are Swedish hands and a creative heart. Bon Appétit!

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Just getting started.

They haven’t taken down the Christmas trees here in the south. They’ve just changed the decorations to Mardi Gras. Maybe all endings are just beginnings.

It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise when we finally moved from Van Dyke Road. We had inched our way down the road, a house at a time. First the white. Then the green. Then the brown. But it did.

I dropped my bike at the end of the driveway in front of the For Sale sign. This was different. The metal stakes in the ground said this was it. The red pick-up was gone. Only my mom’s car.

We used the empty stall for a garage sale. It wasn’t the neighbors that came. They were strangers. Touching our things. Things we wouldn’t have space for in an apartment. I leaned against my bike, wanting desperately to pedal away. Not being able to move. I should have helped. I could have priced things. Sold things. Arranged. But I was stuck. Stuck in our ending.

It took a few apartments on Jefferson Street, but we got there. We got to our beginning. Filled our closets. Filled our hearts. Made new traditions. Embraced the beauty of the impermanence, and just began to live. Keeping our hearts full of Christmas, we hung the purple, green and gold of Mardi Gras.

Change is inevitable. It is constant. It can be difficult. It will be. But the colors. The colors of it all can be —. so very beautiful! And so we begin. And begin again.

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Winning Sweepstakes.

We started off quite similar — Dominique and I comparing grandmothers. Chubby and welcoming. Sure. Always cooking. Yes. A picture of Jesus hanging in the bedroom. Of course. Chinchillas in the basement? What? This is where we began to differ.

She always had a line on something, my Grandma Elsie. Some may have called it a scheme, but I think it was more of a dream. She loved the idea of winning. Whether it was with the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes, or the swamp land in Florida, the coupon on the back of the toasted marshmallow’s package, or raising Chinchillas in the basement. Even in her final letter to her children and grandchildren, she apologized for not making the big score that she so wanted to give them.

She was wrong. Not for trying, no. I think it was fun for her, so why not. But I’m not sure she saw the value in what she gave to us daily. This is how we won. With an aproned hug. A lick of the spoon in the batter. Lemonade on the stickiest of summer days. A Lazy Susan filled with candy. A door never locked. A heart always open.

We won with every visit. We never took naps, but instead ate our lunch in front of the tv watching Days of Our Lives. We played cards and dice – games in which she beat us desperately, but it was the time spent together that felt like winning. Most of her sentences began with “Don’t tell grandpa…” — secrets that felt like wrapped and bowed presents.

She was the last person I remember picking me up, when I was too old and too heavy, my legs dangled in the air. This is the lottery that I win every day.

The games we play may be different now. Trying to win “likes” and “followers.” And I am just as guilty as the next person, thinking, “If I only had this…” But in the quiet moments of the morning. With only the sound of my fingers typing the memory, I feel my heart fill, my legs dangle, and I know, all sweepstakes have been won.

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