Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: neighbor


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The wave of welcoming.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough people to feed. Yet she never seemed to mind when neighbors (neighbors whose houses could not even be seen beyond the fields) popped over at the first waft of the oven’s scent. Her wide knuckled hands waved off the intrusion and welcomed them to the kitchen table.

On the rare occasion that her lap was open, (usually during Days of Our Lives), I would sit and twirl her thinning wedding band. Still able to move at the base of her finger, I knew she would never be able to get it over the middle knuckle. “Did it shrink?” I asked. “What?” “Your ring.” She let out a laugh that sounded like a leak of a hose. “No, my fingers got bigger.” I was shushed to listen to Ma and Pa Horton on the tv.

It makes me happy to think it wasn’t because of the work. I know now, it was the wave of the welcoming. Her hands, just like her heart, got bigger with every visit.

I felt it yesterday as I passed some cookies fresh from the oven over the fence to our neighbor. Her five year old granddaughter was visiting. She said her love for the cookies was bigger than the sun and the moon together! I felt the Elsie-ing of my hands and heart. What a welcome feeling!

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Run Through!

We weren’t related, but they were older and nice, so it seemed natural to call them Grandma and Grandpa Dynda. And even though we didn’t share the same blood, there was an intimacy with these elders that anchored Van Dyke Road. Once you’ve run like the wind through your neighbor’s laundry on the line, I suppose there’s no turning back. You become a part of each other’s world. 

Laundry day at the Dyndas was my version of the Douglas County Fair. I never liked carnival rides. All that spinning made me dizzy — lose my lunch kind of dizzy. But the wind I could ride. The white of sheets and t-shirts, house-dresses and towels, that flapped on Monday’s line in Dynda’s side yard waved to me. And my ticket was Grandma Dynda nodding from the open screen door. Her smiling hand wave said “go ahead, run through.” Arms above my head, I raced through the cleanest breezes in Alexandria, Minnesota. I thought if a hug could fly, this is what it would feel like. I danced and tumbled. It was all so fresh. This neighborhood. This laundry. This summer. This youth. 

I walk past our neighbor’s laundry each day. Rain or shine, they have something on the line. I can’t get close enough to touch, for more reasons than just the gate. Time will take away many things. That’s just life. But I, we, can decide what remains. I stay connected to the world around me. I still believe that hope and possibility, even love, flaps fresh on the line — and permission signals from the screen door, “Go on! Run through!”

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Navigating the pristine.

It happens every time we visit a museum or castle. The pristine grounds will be marked with “keep off the grass” signs (in multiple languages). With the large crowds navigating on sidewalks or paths, inevitably, there is always one person, grinning from ear to ear, certain they are the only person who was smart enough to get this camera perspective. So proud as they stand firm, unknowingly, next to the warning sign. Now I get it, sometimes the language barrier can be tricky, and I never blame children, but most of us possess the awareness to in fact “keep off the grass.” 

The thing is, we learned it right from the start, didn’t we? I remember Mrs. Strand was the first — our kindergarten teacher. And even when Mrs. Podolski replaced her mid year so she could go have her twins, it continued — this identifying the child seated in the next desk as a “neighbor.” Papers were hung next to our neighbors’. Our cubby holes were kept clean out of respect for our neighbors’. We stood in line at the drinking fountain with our neighbors. Marched out calmly in fire drills. Went to lunch. Whispered in the library. Climbed through times tables. Always beside our neighbor. 

Maybe I noticed it because I loved our house neighborhood on VanDyke Road. I loved the people. I loved knowing whose screen door was always open. Whose house wouldn’t mind an extra bike abandoned in the driveway. I even loved Mrs. Muzik’s yard with the pristine grass that we weren’t allowed to run through — because she, too, was our neighbor. And that meant something.

Today, we have the possibility to connect with more people around the world. And I am grateful for these connections. Truly. But I see how some communicate with each other. Trampling over each other. It shocks me still. I understand that things change. Washington School is filled with condos. They paved over the familiar gravel of VanDyke Road. But aren’t we still neighbors? I’d like to think so. I will go on thinking so, as I navigate the pristine. 

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Waiting for Phyllis Norton.

It wasn’t surprising that my mother had to drive Phyllis Norton at full speed down Van Dyke road to Douglas County hospital to have her baby. The surprising part was that she only had to do it once. Mrs. Norton did have five girls after all.

I’m not sure if they were rules of law, or just the rules of the neighborhood, but people respected them either way, and drove slowly on the gravel. On the rare occassion that you saw the billowing of dust behind a vehicle, you knew something had to be wrong. It was this sort of knowledge that was the firm structure on which we based our youth. We knew our neighbors. And for better, or worse, we counted on them. And not just to do the heavy lifting, or make the hospital run, but to be who they were. Each of us had our roles. The Norton girls could fill out any team — softball, kickball, kick the can — they had the numbers, and the ever willingness to play. The Schulz boys guarded our behavior. In hindsight, they weren’t bad, but probably just a little wild, and served as a threat if we did something wrong — “Do you want to go live with the Schulz’s?” We didn’t. So we behaved. Our stunt grandparents, both Dynda and Mullen, served as stability. Open screen doors and plates of cookies. Clothes hanging on the line. Constants. The Lees provided our future — our last pick-up on the school bus, they were young and sparkling clean as their mother, Yvonne, with her movie star looks and shift dresses waved us all goodbye. The Spodens came to fill in our missing pieces and hold together the movement that kicked up the gravel one last time.

Does it matter? I can answer this by a dream I had the other night. It was really in the early stages of the morning. The kind of dream that comes after a rough night. The kind of dream that stays with you. In my dream, we lived in a replica of my grandparents’ house here in France. Our house was filled with unknown tourists, struggling with their cellphones. Looking out the kitchen window, I saw someone familiar. I flung open the door and raced toward her yelling in delight for all of France to hear — “Phyllis Norton is here!!!!! Phyllis Norton is here!!!!” I screamed it through our yard. Through our house! And woke up with such joy. Such comfort.

So it did matter. It matters still. We built something. Together. And it remains. Even a lifetime and country away, it supplies a structure of support. A stability of goodness. I carry it with me daily. Count on it. Guard it with my heart. And go to sleep each night, waiting for Phyllis Norton.

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Lucky.

Most of the houses on VanDyke road had screen doors for the summer. There is a freedom in the sound of that screen door gently banging itself shut, because no matter who’s door you were racing through, who’s house you were leaving, you simply ran fearless out into the wild, the wild of a gravel road and more time than our school free minds could imagine… still, we ran, with newly tanned legs, in and out of neighbors’ houses, never looking for cars, or danger of any kind. 

It is something to grow up in a neighborhood. Not just a place where people lived near one another, but a true neighborhood, where you were part of something bigger than yourself. You were part of every home behind each swinging door. You were cared for, and watched over. You were free to roam under every sun, and gathered home each night with your mother’s call from the front stoop. To look, wander, and explore, unafraid, that made us not only rich, but the luckiest kids alive. 

They say if you see a bird looking away from itself, it is a sign of good luck because it means that bird doesn’t feel like it has to protect itself from danger. I suppose that’s what we were — young birds – flitting and flying about Van Dyke Road, never worried, free to look in any direction. 

And then one day, we all flew away, with all of our wildly different high hopes.  

What a gift we were given. These open skies over Van Dyke Road. Sometimes, even now, if the summer breeze gently blows my cares away, I look around without worry, and think, how lucky I was, to learn to fly.

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