Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: sainte victoire


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Up the side of the barn.

Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.

Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.

People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.

It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.

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The other side of the brush.

I can reach it through the tree line when I’m mowing the lawn, this portal to my childhood years. Pushing up, pulling back and pushing up again, I saw it —  the outline, the invitation, of a small chair. I idled the lawnmower to peek through the leaves. There was a tiny table. Two abandoned plastic cups from the most recent party. One of the attendees, a small stuffed bear, obviously warn out from the festivities, was taking a nap in the shade of the table. Without unhandling the mower, my heart maneuvered through the thistled brush, and I, in my white flowered dress from my sixth birthday, sidled up to the table. Everyone came. All of my dolls and stuffed animals. My mom with her extra-frosting cake sat beside me. We clinked tiny cups of water disguised as tea and we spoke in the language of Alice, and danced behind the looking glass. Fueled by youth and love and the belief in all things possible, I finished cutting the grass.

I bake her cookies, the little neighbor girl. In exchange, I suppose, unknowingly perhaps, she keeps the door open.

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Nowhere to hide.

Getting my hair cut a few days ago, I saw her. My hair wet and slicked back, there was nothing to disguise my face. She was saying something about my preferred style as she brushed, but all I could hear was the smile of my mother’s reflection. And it washed over me, the same joyful relief and responsibility, as it always had whenever anyone said, “You look just like your mother.” 

Sometimes I catch myself — the brain can so easily throw out words that the heart would never dare. And I imagine those words coming out of my mother’s mouth and I fling them away. Because it’s not just her face, it’s about all that she had faced. And how she did it, with grace and dignity. And she, carrying her father’s, wasn’t I carrying both? And isn’t it my responsibility to do the same, and more? 

Sometimes I fail. My hand slips on the rock where he stands. My heart breaks the ruffle of her dress. And I know they see me. I have nothing to disguise myself from them. But they keep smiling at me. On shoulder and in mirror. I hear them. I see them. And know they see the love in my attempt. And I give them back their smiles, and I am saved. 

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The race of summer. 

To be so filled with life that it has to flush from your very pores. Cheeks ruddy and ever ready. I suppose we all think it will last forever — sure that our feet will keep the deal that youth has made. But maybe it’s the heart that takes over. (Or maybe it led all along.) Maybe it’s the heart that drags us from spring’s mud into summer’s bliss. Maybe it’s the heart that races through grass’s morning dew again and again, and lifts us up from green knees when we fall, ever promising to keep our cheeks flushed through autumn. Through winter.

Every time I paint a face, I feel the colors in my own, flowing through my hands. And the corners of my mouth rise up, smiling, so happy to be a part of youth’s reddening still.

What will you do today, to remain in the race of summer? 

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To the mountain.

I see the Sainte Victoire mountain every day. It always catches my breath. On the halfway point of my daily walk I get the best view. I try to drink it in slowly. It is the latte I order extra hot to make it last longer. It is the tentative first sip of familiar and spectacular against my lips. Delicious.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have noticed it. Would I have just gulped it in and moved on? It was Cezanne who led me to it. Painting by painting. Image by image. In books and museums. Telling me again how worthy it was. How beautiful. And I believed it before I stood beneath it. Before I climbed it. Before I painted it. 

That’s what we can do for each other. It’s why I love a latte, I suppose. Because of each one shared with my mother, with my friends. Each sip an experience. Of laughter and tears. An extension of a meal. A way to make the afternoon last longer. A gathering of love, sip by sip. 

And the thing is, we can do it with everything. When we share what we love. The things we find important. When we show each other the view from our hearts, it can be the familiar turned spectacular. I mean it’s just a rock, a giant rock, this Sainte Victoire. So if we can turn that into a “breath-taker” — just imagine what else love can do! 

It’s time to show our hearts. Look at things differently. Open our minds. And just see!!!!

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The comfort of shore.

Van Dyke Road separated the two worlds. It was so magical how far crossing one small stretch of gravel could take me. The back of our house faced a sea of grain — Hugo’s field. And in a way, it was like swimming, running through the stalks at full chubby- legged-speed, arms stretched to each side, creating a golden wave. Across the road though, behind Weiss’s house, was a lake. Not a big one. Nor a clean one, of the 10,000 our state touted. We didn’t swim in it. So what was the allure? It had to be the dock. 

Florence and Alvin had a big yard. Bonnie, the daughter, was so much older, that to me, she was just another adult. So there were no arms of youth waving me over to play. I would sneak along the shrub line. Roll down the manicured slope to the lake’s edge. I could hear the dock before I saw it. The wave rocked wood cracking gently. I took off one bumper tennis shoe and placed my lavender-white toes on the sun warmed plank. It was extraordinary. I have no memory of being a shoeless baby, but I imagine at some point some uncle or boisterous neighbor blew their warm breath on my rounded feet, and I knew, standing there, barefoot on Weiss’s dock, this must be exactly how it felt. I giggled like that infant and took off my other shoe. 

I braved each crack to the end. My body craved what my feet already had, so I lay down and let it gather in my arms, legs and back. My fingers danced at my side in the tiny puddles of cool water that gathered in the wood’s unevenness. I don’t know if I saw all the beauty of these imperfections, but I’d like to think I did. 

Who knows how long I stayed. Summer afternoons felt eternal. I guess in a way, they are. I can still rest in that warmth. 

I have written so many times about swimming – in actual lakes. Lake Latoka was only a bike ride away. But just out my door, front and back, oh, how my heart and imagination swam. Daily. And maybe that’s what home is after all…this ability to dream in the comfort of shore. 

The comfort of shore.
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No sharp edges.

For me, it’s the softness of her gaze. No sharp edges to her reaction. Even her shoulders aren’t weighted. This is what makes her beautiful — not what she sees, but how she sees it. From within. 

I paint her to remind myself the same is true for all of us. How we navigate through this world is what people really see. We need to stay informed, of course, but the ugliness that gathers, and there is a lot, I don’t want that inside of me. So I soften my gaze. My eyes. My lips. My tongue. Relax my shoulders. Nothing for hatred and ill will to hang on. (Because aren’t those sharp edges so much easier to cling to?)

I suppose I only know it, because I was always given that soft place to land. My grandma’s lap, my mother’s heart. I see now that it was not only for me, but for them as well. A gift we must give each other.  A gift we must give ourselves. I dare the morning and the mirror softly. No sharp edges in sight.

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Paying attention.

She was the first to notice, the waitress in Stillwater, Minnesota. I have worn these earrings every day for a couple of years — the outline of the Sainte Victoire mountain. She brought the check to the table and asked, “What mountain is that?” I beamed, for me of course, but for her as well — being curious, paying attention. “It’s the Sainte Victoire,” I replied, “in Aix en Provence where we live.” And the conversation began, all because she was alive, awake!

These earrings represent home. Heart. Courage. Strength. They are the mountains I have, can, and will continue to climb daily. What made her, of all people, notice? Even in France, no one has asked about them. But she did. Maybe she was climbing her own mountain. Maybe she was asking her legs to carry what her heart just couldn’t bear at the moment. Or maybe she just liked them. And that’s enough too. The thing is, she asked the question. A specific question. 

We get lazy I think. Uninterested. We settle on the “how are you?”s and think we did enough. But is it? Is it enough? Is it enough to just pass through each other’s lives? Without learning? Without caring?  

Two years of climbing were wiped away in just a few brief seconds, and I was happy! It really takes so little. So I tell myself, I tell you, be curious, pay attention, — it’s not too much to ask. 

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Des Moines’ Sainte Victoire. 

It wasn’t in any color that I had seen before. The Sainte Victoire mountain hanging at the museum in Iowa was bolding in oranges and reds and yellows — everything but the colors of Provence — and yet, we knew in an instant that it was home. 

That’s the beautiful thing about “home,” it can come in so many disguises. I have seen it in fields. On sidewalks. On sand. And snow. In front of a painting. In the embrace of love. From state to state. Now country to country. 

I used to think one had to search to “find” it.  But it became clear that it was more about seeing it, feeling it, wherever I was. Inside. The heart has the most magnificent filter, if you use it. It can process through any color, any distraction of pain, hurt, confusion, and find its way home. And, oh, how the world, we humans, like to distract — with all of our “look at them,”s or “look at that!”s — when really, all we need to do is look within. 

We stumbled joyfully through this world of an orange provence, and we were happy. All differences can be navigated, when your heart is in the right place.

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It can be climbed.

Would I have seen it — the majestic beauty of the Sainte Victoire — if Cezanne hadn’t shown it in paintings again and again?  I’d like to think yes, but I can’t be sure. Never to lose it, the appreciation, each day when I walk by the viewpoint, I stop. Sometimes I take a photo. Sometimes I just wave and give thanks. Some days I climb a little higher. Perhaps to get a little closer. Like Laura did on Little House on the Prairie, when she needed to be in voice reach of heaven. She rattled her braids and sweated her brow. Tested the very muscles of her thighs just to get a little closer. 

I don’t measure these daily steps in “likes.” I measure them in steps. How close can I get to the real beauty of those around me? The heavenly goodness of my grandparents and mother. Of teachers and friends. I can’t take the chance that they don’t know, that you don’t know. So I keep climbing. With keyboard and brush. Telling their stories. Our stories. 

I suppose we all think we’re just one voice, what could it matter? But I have to believe it does. It matters to me. And when I see you out there, thighs burning, heart racing, I tell you I can’t climb it for you, but it can be climbed. We can do this — I tell it to my own sweating brow, and yours, yes, we can.

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