Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: mom


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A little lampless.

“I just got off the phone with Phyllis Norton.” That was the subject of the email from my mother a few years ago, an email that I just can’t seem to erase. I have hundreds. Each one more special than the next. No large events. Mostly “I loved today’s post,” or “I miss you,” or “laughter and tears of tenderness,” and always, always, “I love you so much.”

I have to admit in the light of the events currently taking place, I struggle. Does it really matter if I write something positive? If I try to find some words to say that we have to be kind. That we have to be better. To find the words that convey hope. I don’t really know. But then I look through my emails. And every word that my mother typed finds its way into my heart and I know I have to try.

We used to hold many concerts in our car. My mother at the wheel, my fingers on the radio. She got off of work at 4pm. But wintertime in Minnesota meant it was already dark. She needed to go for a fitting. My grandma’s friend was tailoring some pants for her. She had lost so much weight after the divorce. The country roads were lampless. It all felt a little daunting until my fingers tuned in Barry Manilow. (Yes, we were Fanilows.) We even had the album. So timely, he was singing:

“It takes that one voice
Just one voice, singing in the darkness
All it takes is one voice
Shout it out and let it ring
Just one voice, it takes that one voice
And everyone will sing.”

And it was true. That one voice became three, and every turn seemed a little brighter.

I mention it only because, while it does feel a little lampless right now, we still have a voice. We still have the ability to change things. It was Phyllis Norton who drove my mother to the hospital from Van Dyke Road when she was about to give birth. It all matters. The email remains.

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Out of nothing.

When I saw the image of the man start to appear, it made me laugh. I had seen him before. Not this exact version, but certainly a handsome man, clad in something spectacular from the Sundance catalog, or Banana Republic.

It started when I was in college. We didn’t have email or texting. We had letters. My mother sent something to me weekly. Oh what a glorious day when I saw it in the mailbox. Maybe it began because there wasn’t a lot of news to be shared. Or maybe it was simply her glorious sense of humor. She cut out images of good looking men her age from catalogs and wrote, “Wouldn’t you like him for a stepfather?” The answer was always yes! And the jokes continued about ordering, sending away for, arriving in the mail… we could go on forever, until it switched to the outfits in the same catalog that she would wear to get said man, which turned into a fashion show of what we already had, an exchange of compliments, bent over belly laughs and hearts that were full. 

Through the years, at gallery shows throughout the country, people would ask my mother if she too was an artist. She shyly said no, but we both knew the truth in the hesitation. She could, had, and continued, to create something out of nothing. Isn’t that exactly what an artist is?  I think so. 

I see him in my sketchbook and write stepfather. My mother’s art lives on. 

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Only the weak are cruel.

I watched her pull it off the shelf in our basement apartment. She’d sit beneath the garden window to get the sliver of light offered, turning the pages of the Leo Buscaglia book, each word a simple prayer for courage. I knew she was always worried that she wasn’t brave enough, strong enough, but even in that tiny sliver, I could see differently. For hadn’t she written it herself on the sticky note, after reading the sentence over and over. Hadn’t she risen from the chair, gone to the drawer under the phone, tested three pens, and finally rewrote the words, “ Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”  She went back to reading. I pulled the kitchen chair in front of the cupboard and read the words that hung from the phone’s receiver (that hang in my heart still). Gentleness bounced from room to room on Jefferson Street. 

I’m sure at some point she had learned it from her father. Didn’t he display that same gentle strength in farm light. But it’s good to be reminded. In book, on sticky notes, in the glance of the common good. So I write the words in different forms to remind myself. To maybe remind you, with a gentle bounce of kindness, a never ending prayer for strength. 

Mom.
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To my own hands.

When the world gets this overwhelming, I have to narrow the picture. From planet to country. Still too big. From city, to neighborhood. I can’t make sense of it all. Down to house. To room. To kitchen. To my own hands. I pull it out of the oven. And rest in the place of, “This bread is good.”

And maybe that’s all we can do. Be responsible for our own hand in it. Each day. Each minute. Forget the but they did this, they think that, how could they???? In order to breathe, I have to let go of “they,” in exchange for the reach of my own hands. 

At the breakfast table, it’s hard not to go over the latest news. Of course we have to be informed. We must learn and grow and be aware. I can’t change what’s going on in my old neighborhood. And it would be easy to say it doesn’t make a difference at all. But I can’t believe that. And so I humbly paint and write. And connect with the random. We will never be rewarded with certainty. But we have to try. Who would we be if we didn’t even try?

So I rise from the morning table, knowing only two things for sure, this bread is delicious, and all we have to do is be good to each other.

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Jonquil.

I was a teenager having surgery in Minneapolis. It was not yet spring, but for my mother. She was dressed in yellow, head to toe.  From my wheelchair, I could see her slacks, not break at the knee, but simply curve like a note in a Harry Belafonte song. The elevator door opened and the doctor smiled at her — said she looked as “beautiful as a jonquil.” I didn’t even know what that meant, but it was the most elegant compliment I had ever heard. Back at my room, no iPad or telephone, certainly no dictionary, we could only imagine how beautiful that flower looked.

It has been decades, and I’m still lifted by yellow. I’m still lifted that my mother dressed to lift, herself and me. I’m still lifted by jonquils standing tall in a breeze that they shouldn’t survive, as my mother bent, but never broke. 

As the elevator door opened to 2026, I gave the woman in my sketchbook a yellow sweater. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Lift each other. 

Welcome to the garden. 

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No hurry.

It was my mother who listened to me with the patience of paper. I could tell her anything. No dream was too big. No concern too frivolous. No wonder dismissed. I could cursive my feelings throughout the house, and she would gather them in softly, gently, filling heart reams daily. 

I didn’t read Anne Frank until junior high. I had already been writing for years. On scraps of paper. Wood-burning notes into panels. Poems on birthday cards. Hopes onto sticky pads. But I didn’t have a diary. And it wasn’t until reading Anne Frank’s that I knew why. It was because I had my mother. Anne wrote in her diary, thinking she had “no such real friend” to confide in. My mother was that “friend.”

Through the years, as I made my living selling the words and images, I was constantly approached by my sales reps and store owners with “What’s new?” A feverish flurry to get to the next thing. An urgency to keep the writing short – “no one will take the time to read all that.” I would smile and think that Anne Frank was right, “Paper is more patient than people.” 

I’ve tried to stay true to my slow and looping cursive heart. Giving it the space and time it needs. Giving it the care my mother showed me it was worth.

I hope you have that friend. That confidante. If not, let it be me. Take your time. I’m in no hurry.

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Shrugging off purple.

Perhaps if you were to call it an eggplant, you wouldn’t give it such a frame. But l’aubergine, yes, an aubergine could hold its own, and perhaps even more, be the one not supported by, but wearing the frame. 

Hearing my name called now, it comes with a French accent, an English one, even German…so isn’t it funny that I always hear my mother’s voice. The familiar long o, so long it sometimes didn’t even have room for the i at the end, it simply wrapped itself around and ended with the d. Framing my heart, not just with love, but with a responsibility. In that drawn out o, I knew I was to keep becoming. 

I try every day. Offering up the words and the art. Would she find it worthy of how she framed me? The light in which she wanted me to be seen. My mother. I hope so. I think so. I keep trying. Because didn’t she bat away the ordinary? Try to clear the path? Shrug off and roll her eyes at purple? Yes, yes, yes…Joyfully, I was led to believe that I was aubergine. 

Aubergine.
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Mondays and Molasses.

Shopping Michigan Avenue, my mom and I wanted it to never end. We went in every store. Up and down. Miles and miles of Chicago’s “magnificent.” 

We weren’t big Nike fans, but the store itself was gorgeous. We feigned affection. Running our fingers against t-shirts and track suits (long before leisure wear, that’s what we called them.) I don’t know who stopped first, but we stood in front of the poster and read. Words could always hold our attention. There was a woman running on a country road with these words, “There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.” We both smiled, and ran along beside her. 

The places we traveled in that truth!  I still do.

I’m still sometimes thrown by Mondays in France. Nothing is open. Yesterday morning, I told Dominique that we were out of treats. Before he finished asking, “Where would you like…” we both realized the Mondayness of the situation. By mid afternoon, I was able to travel to Chicago in order to find that my French kitchen was always open. Monday didn’t stand a chance against my molasses. I made the cookies, and may I say, they are magnificent. 

I pride myself in finding a way. My mother saw to that. She’s still guiding me through Monday. Tuesday is here. Wide open!  Let’s run!

A little bread too!
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Claiming your apostrophe.

Maybe it was more intimidating when dress shops had an actual name. When the boutique said it was not just fashionable, but the fashion of this woman. This LaRou. And we knew it was her choice, her idea of what to wear, because it was right there, in the name of the store, within the possessive of the “s.” With all respect and admiration, I followed my mother beneath the gentle ring of the opening door, as she stepped into LaRou’s. 

She lightly touched the fabrics. Sure not to leave a trace of evidence that the money wasn’t there. Yet smiling, behind the knowledge, she was worthy of wearing. 

Through the years, I watched her confidence grow. I watched her walk through the bells a little faster. A little taller. The names on the stores changed. The locations. From Alexandria, to Minneapolis, to Chicago and New York. All the “s”s that were dropped, she collected and wore them proudly. For each outfit was not theirs any longer. She added the grace. The style. And didn’t they all become Ivy’s.

I see it so clearly now. Watching people become. How extraordinary they are, you are, when you step into your grace. Claim it as your own. Walk proudly under the ringing of your own bell — your opening to this life. Claiming your apostrophe. Beautiful! 

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Ever golden.

I used to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to begin decorating for Christmas. Of course it’s not a French holiday, but I still feel it, these precious days. And in a moment of good news, of special thanks, I began stringing lights. 

Even when I take the time to put away the decorations, they seem to have the capacity to knot themselves into a frenzy — into tangles that no Johnson’s baby shampoo could tackle. 

I smile, remembering how golden that bottle was, just like the lights in my hand. What care my mother took with my long blonde locks. Stroke by stroke, she brushed each strand, staying true to the “No tears,” just as the bottle claimed. But somehow I always knew, it wasn’t the shampoo that kept the promise, but the gentle touch of my mother’s hands.

And isn’t this what illuminates me still? Isn’t this what sets my table? So I make a new promise, to her, and all the loves that surround me now, to ever be gentle, never careless, with these precious days. 

Happy Thanksgiving. Today and ever golden.

Happy Thanksgiving!
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