Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: mercy


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Being tulip.

Our kitchen table is noticeably naked this morning. I’ve had tulips on it for the last three weeks. Yesterday the last final stems ended in petal tears, and I let them go. I know it going in. And yet, oh, how I love them! And why not?! I suppose some choose to leave their tables bare. Never wanting to feel the absence. But I would not trade one curve of the stem. Waking to the dancer’s move, as it reaches for the morning sun. Each day a new position. Beauty, not with the promise of ever, but the grace of now. And I will keep choosing it. 

I hope I do the same. Keep reaching toward the love. The morning sun. My stem may be clunky, but my heart, let it ever be a tulip. 

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Small magic. Tiny mercies.

Maybe if they were too big, we wouldn’t be able to fly at all. That’s what I tell myself as I celebrate the small magic moments of each day.

On my phone, I replaced my friend’s icon that was simply her initials, with a picture of my first bird woman. I can’t say why exactly. It just felt right. I’ve had it that way for months, but I only told her yesterday. When I showed her the picture, she beamed. “You have no way of knowing this,” she said, “but ever since I was a little girl I imagined that I had bird friends that would follow me around and speak to me.” 

This is the magic I cling to. It weighs nothing, and even more, lifts me higher. 

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We must spring!

I received my banana seat bike for my birthday the end of March in my sixth year on Van Dyke Road. Minnesota’s winter had yet to let go. Yet I bundled and booted and climbed aboard. I had trained for this all last summer and fall. The baby bike that I had learned on, with its stabilizing wheels, hung from a carpenter nail in the back of the garage, waiting to be passed along to neighbor or cousin. The slush of snow, salt and gravel spit from the back wheel, leaving a streak up my down jacket. But perched on the flowers of the vinyl seat, and led by the same pink, blue, green and yellow florals of the basket, it never felt more like spring. 

I never gave a thought to the weather, nor the whether… everything was yes! I suppose it has to be. How else would we get back on that bike with skinless knees and elbows? This is what I try to hang on to. Hang on to the slippery handlebars of youth. With no grasp of maybe. Not waiting for spring, but tethering it to my waist and dragging it in. 

The countless training wheels have been passed on again and again. There is no turning back. Only forward. I look out the morning window, and know I, we, must spring!

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Chasing poems.

Sometimes you have to save them from the drain. The pillowcase. The pebbles in the road. Because you never know when the words are going to come. In the shower. Just before sleep. Out for a walk. I don’t always get there in time to save them all. There is a famous story of a poet running from the working fields, trying to get back to the house in time to capture the magic. Secure the poem. Knowing that it would find another heart, another pen to go through if she didn’t get there in time.

And so it is with muddy shoes, wordless, I turn to the canvas. And I paint. Magic comes in so many forms, if we are willing to adapt. To change. To grow. Because love is merciful. Even at the times when you are exhausted, running after it from a field so far, it offers options. Turn to the canvas, it says. To the book. To the kitchen. The table. The craft. The persons behind you. Those lost. Running beside you. Also waiting. Because if we expect from it — this art of love — to indeed be merciful, to be there for us, how can we possibly not do the same?

I chase it myself. I know. But for a moment these words are caught in the hope that I will do better. Be better. I, we, must get there in time.

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