Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: spring


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A whole lot of wonder!

It didn’t occur to me until I saw the Easter candy going down the conveyer belt, that the “bunny” had now infiltrated the French story. And if not the story, at least the basket. That was not the case when I arrived many years ago. I still don’t know if I have it exactly right, but the delivery system had to do with bells, and not bunnies. And the candy reflected said bells along with chickens and bears and eggs. I laughed inside at first, how ridiculous, a bell delivering candy, when so obviously it’s a bunny…on it’s hind legs…well, ok… I had to agree that both stories needed a little blind faith, and a whole lot of wonder. And I suppose that’s the key to everything.

Through the years I have inserted my own narrative into the French culture. Decorating eggs at Easter. Bringing turkey, the whole holiday I guess, of Thanksgiving. Pictures and portraits and stories. So many stories of my grandparents. My mother. I guess I just want everyone to love them as much as I do. I want you to love them. Because I think if you love them, you will also think of them, and you will miss them, and I won’t have to carry that alone. Their beautiful lives and loves will be so light, so easily carried on the wings of a bell, or the hop of a bunny. Maybe that’s silly, but don’t we have to be? Isn’t it silly to believe that love can change everything? That it can lift us? Renew us? Give us new life year after year? Help us rise up, yearly, daily, minute by minute? 

There is a weight to the world right now that is in dire need of that silly. We all could use a little faith and a whole lot of wonder. No matter how you deliver it today, may your love be light, may your joy travel far. Happy Easter. Joyeuses Pâques!

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Inside.

Before I could read a calendar, I knew the season of the year by the color of my Grandmother’s purse. The glorious shine of the white leather sack told us all it was spring. When unzipped I knew if I removed most of the essentials, that I could fit my whole head inside. I only knew this because with her attention focused on the stove, I sat on her bed and did just that. I can’t explain the need to get inside everything, I suppose I thought the love was there. So I clomped around in her Thom McAn shoes. Tied her apron around my head so it wouldn’t hit the floor. And I felt a part of it all. A part of her. But it was in the spring of my fifth year, the reveal of the white purse was accompanied by white gloves. Never had I wanted to be inside something more. I saw her slip one glove through the handles, bracing the weighted sack against her church dress, while coddling with the other white gloved hand. I envied the purse. The gloves. (In the most loving of ways.) I sat between her and my mother at Calvary Lutheran. I’m sure others were there, but how could I notice anything beyond those gloves? At one point in the service, (I can’t be sure when because I felt a little faint with excitement), she slipped out her hands and laid the gloves on her knee. I could barely breathe. I looked up at my mother for permission. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say why not. I picked them off of her lap as gently as if not to wake a baby, and slowly slipped my hands inside. I had no idea what was happening. It all felt so wonderful. Had I just become a woman? I folded my hands. I clutched them to my imaginary pearls. I held my face within the pure whiteness of all that love. And I was saved.

I never imagined for that moment to be outdone. But in my sixth season of the white purse, my sixth spring, my mother came down the Sunday morning hallway, singing her own words to the easter song, “Here comes Peter Cotton Fuzz, best little bunny there ever was…” and she hand me the basket. I assume it had chocolate eggs and jelly beans… but how could I be sure, because I couldn’t look away from the white gloves draped over the handle. I crawled inside of all that love. And I have never left.

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Wooing.

As with any relationship, it takes a little effort. I imagine it wants to be wooed. Who doesn’t like that? After being gone, I want our home to know how much I appreciate it. I’m not just going to dump out my suitcases and expect it to take care of me, of us.

So Dominique plays the music. And I light the candles. I bake the bread that wafts gently through each nook. I don’t just make the bed, but crawl inside the duvet to get the comforters just right. We pick up the pine cones and Dominique gently trims the trees. We open windows and vacuum. I talk to the paintings. And clear the dust of winter’s close. Pick the greenery and offer it to our entry. Because we both love a welcome. Knowing to receive one, one must also be given. 

Maybe it’s silly, but I need to fall in love with my home, to fall more in love with my life. And then, I truly have something to give. Isn’t it romantic? I think I’ll do the same with spring. Woo!

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Open waters.

They aren’t always so clear. So when I get an obvious sign, I like to celebrate it.

I was thinking the exact same thing when he said, “I like to see the open waters.” I smiled and agreed. What was cold and white, frozen, just a couple of months ago, now rippled and danced blue under a changing sky.

I don’t know if nature is as silly as we humans. Suffering and fighting the cracks. Or does it simply release? They say we have to be cracked open, that’s where the love gets in. But each time it happens, I have a tendency to forget. Put up a struggle. And it’s not like my heart hasn’t been through the “winter months” before…found its way to spring…so why do I, we, fight it? I guess as with everything, we have to be in it to know. So for now, I will simply enjoy the water’s release into the new season. I will flow with the promise of spring and try to keep it in my memory — this nature of things.

Oh, to be open! To it all! Come spring! Cracks and all! I feel buoyant already!

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Gravel to pavement.

It’s easy to imagine that everyone is experiencing the same weather. The sunny and 80 degrees are beginning to drop as we head out of California. I have to admit, I often forgot that it was still winter. While I was wearing shorts, most were bundled. 

And that’s the thing, I suppose, we adapt to our surroundings perhaps just a little too easily. We come to believe that everyone is having the same experience. Living the same life. The same wants and needs as our inner circles. But it’s just not true. 

It becomes more clear when you roam the country. The variances from state to state, from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood are extraordinary. It doesn’t always make clear why people make the choices they make, but it does explain why the choices are different. 

Has it always been this way? I think I first noticed the difference when I was in grade school. My world, of course, was Van Dyke Road. I was aware of the change from gravel to pavement. I had ridden my bike beyond our road, onto the tar, around the lake, over the railroad tracks, past Big Ole into town, a million times. But it only became truly clear when I went for a sleepover to Barbie’s house in Victoria Heights. Was it the move from road to heights? The change from Van Dyke to Victoria? I wasn’t sure. But it was different. They called it a development. I didn’t have the words for it then, but it sounded important. And my mental vocabulary told me that it was different. But that different to me, never meant bad. I wore my gravel like a badge, and I rode on.

When did it become bad — this different? I’d like to think it hasn’t for me, but am I paying attention. I have to pay attention. We all have to pay attention. We all change and grow at different times. And some don’t get the luxury of either. The weather is changing. The very climates of our being. 

I don’t have the answers, but I do believe in the randomness of it all. Life is constant change. In this we can take comfort. I am reminded of the quote by Hal Borland: “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”  I’m counting on it. May we all. 

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High hopes.

Today was one of my mom’s favorite holidays — Groundhog Day! No pressure of gifts or events. No worries of saying it right, offending someone. No “should-haves” or “supposed-tos”. It was, and always would be, only what you made of it, she said. Because whether or not shadows were cast, (and certainly she knew about that), spring was going to come. 

And wasn’t that exactly how she, we, lived. No control of weather, or those who tried to cast things over us, like doubt, or fear, or worry, (all things dark). And even if, or when, they did — we too, just like everyone else, held the promise of spring. It was not based on wealth, or the building you prayed in, the name you held, or the person you voted for. Spring was coming, sometimes later than we wanted, indeed, but it never failed. And wasn’t that a beautiful reason for hope, for celebration! 

Some will call it silly. (I’ve never thought of silly as an insult.) And so what if it is. I will never look down a moment of hope. A day taken just as a reminder that no matter what we do, what is done, spring is coming. Spring is coming! What a gift! What a thing to celebrate! Happy Groundhog Day, my friends! The sun is shining through the window, my heart, my fingers — make of it what you will!  

And off we flew with all of wildly different high hopes!
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Hey, Robin!

They were always happy to see her. “Hey, Robin!” Women waving from windowsills freshly opened. Kids on bicycles, spinning newly bare-legged. The mail carriers with a little extra spring in their steps. And that was it, she supposed, this spring. She hadn’t realized what was brought each year — this promise of renewal. This hope of better days. But she had seen her mother do it, from, well, this bird’s eye view. Fully nested she watched the earth give her mother an approving wink, and she knew one day she would do the same.

She couldn’t remember the day it happened. It seemed she was just flying. Underneath her mother’s wing, she soared through city and field. Darting and dancing. Oh, what joy to be in her mother’s stream. Flowers bloomed and bees sang along in seemingly endless sun. She wasn’t worried when the colors began to change. They were still lovely. Almost the rouge of her own breast. How could that be bad? So she kept flying through the dropping leaves. She hadn’t seen winter yet. But her mother prepared her as best she could. “But if we bring the spring,” she questioned, why don’t we just bring it now?” Her mother smiled, knowing she had asked the same thing. And her mother before her. I suppose everyone wonders. Why the winter months? Poets and philosophers have always tried to answer. But maybe the most truthful was her mother — who stopped focusing on the why, and only looked forward to the sweet call.

She thinks about her daily. Hears her song in each twig that she rests on. Her tiny orange heart can get away from her. And she knows she wasn’t promised spring. No, she would have to bring it. The thought heavies her wings, and she waits. It takes a winter, I suppose, for the “have to” to turn to a “get to.” But the hopeful flutter returns. She “gets to” bring the spring. What a privilege! She leaps from branch to blue, and hears the joyful cries — “Hey, Robin!”

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The out from under.

There must have been more of it then — the snow. I remember garage doors avalanched. Gravel buried. Yards that melded one into the other on Van Dyke Road. (Aaaaah, the great white equalizer.) And maybe it was youth, or inexperience, or lessons yet unlearned, but I don’t remember ever feeling that we wouldn’t come out from under. Even as abandoned snowmen clung to life beside Spring’s marigolds, I believed in the warmth ahead. 

Perhaps it’s the reasoning for all the lights. On trees and mantles. Candles lit and windows outlined with blinks of eternal hope. I suppose we do everything to keep the warmth alive. We highlight memories. Not to relive the winter, but to point our way to summer’s embrace. To prove to our hearts, and mostly our minds (the heart is always the easier sell) that we can overcome. We can survive. And will. And WILL. 

It’s ironic — this urgency to rush the winter, when it all really goes so fast. To slow it down, I remember the boots tipped over on radiators. Scarves half frozen from breathless gasps captured in the cold. And I think, what haven’t I survived? What haven’t we survived? And I gather in the light — warmed in the “out from under” — and I am saved.

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Before we’re asked to grow.

He was a few years younger than us. Not that many if you counted them now, but  in high school a couple of years made a big difference. And it was those few years that made us call him Pauly, not Paul. Just one little letter, a y, to differentiate.

He was my best friend’s brother. I had already learned that bad things could happen. Not just little things like a poor grade or a sack lunch you didn’t like, but gut-wrenching things, life altering things. But they hadn’t yet. So it was not only the news that shook them, but the surprise of it all. 

And Hemingway had warned us in our English prep class. Told us how we expected to be sad in the fall, but not in summer. I could hear the change in her voice. How this brilliant sun-filled day had broken them, along with Pauly’s spine. He chose to dive and not fall off the shallow dock. And with that one impulse changed the course of everything. Changed the “y” to “why?”…and just like that Pauly became Paul.

We don’t always get to be ready before we’re asked to grow. Rarely, I suppose. But we will be asked. All. And we won’t be given the answers to the questions. But we will be given the chance. The spring.

I saw the blooming trees on my walk yesterday. And I thought of him. How far he had come from the endless days at the hospital. And I smiled because the why had returned to a y, and he was Pauly again. I touched the pink surprise of the bloom, and kept walking.

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A peach!

Our peach tree, Officer Bob, (I named him Officer Bob because I always imagined him in an old time movie, cigar tucked in the side of his mouth, looking at something beautiful and saying, “It’s a peach, see….”) — anyway, yesterday Office Bob broke a major limb. We have been worried about him all spring — carrying more fruit that ever before. Each branch loaded beyond capacity. Dropping unripe fruit daily to get some relief. (When I mowed the lawn it smelled like jam.) But yesterday I guess it all became too much. One of his branches, and it was a thick one, snapped beneath the weight.

The things we carry.

It’s too self-important to imagine that this was a lesson just for me. But, none the less, it is definitely something I need to keep learning.

By nature, I suppose, I have always been one to add the weight of worry. I have improved, but I can certainly still overload my branches. I don’t think we’re built to carry. Even the good things can become too much. Maybe we’re meant to feel and release. Letting go of the bad things. And letting loose all the good – sending it out for all the world to see.

A bird rests on one of his limbs this morning. So light. Singing a song of hope. Maybe we can do the same for each other. Be there for each other. No weight added. Only song.

Worry dropped, love released, the morning winks and says, “It’s going to be a peach, see!”

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