Jodi Hills

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

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Through the blue. 

I have spent my life daring the blue dress, long before I was ready to dance. I’m not sure I’ve ever really been ready for anything. (Can anyone be?) Mostly I think I’ve just started.

Uncertain, I have eased my head through. Let it drop over nervous shoulders. I have turned on the record player. Let the music travel from ears to fingers, as I slipped into the black hose. And I have braced my nervous heart with arms over ribs that simply couldn’t be trusted. And without my knowledge or permission, the blue begins to blur, and there is no more getting ready — I AM a dancer.

If we waited for the perfect time, we’d never do anything. There is no sure that gets us over the edge. No certainty. And if there were, would there be any reason to continue? This is what I tell myself in the jitters of it all. The nervousness is simply a dance. 

And so I begin. I wiggle my shoulders. My toes. And I am move a little easier through the blue. 

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Just getting started.

They haven’t taken down the Christmas trees here in the south. They’ve just changed the decorations to Mardi Gras. Maybe all endings are just beginnings.

It shouldn’t have come as such a surprise when we finally moved from Van Dyke Road. We had inched our way down the road, a house at a time. First the white. Then the green. Then the brown. But it did.

I dropped my bike at the end of the driveway in front of the For Sale sign. This was different. The metal stakes in the ground said this was it. The red pick-up was gone. Only my mom’s car.

We used the empty stall for a garage sale. It wasn’t the neighbors that came. They were strangers. Touching our things. Things we wouldn’t have space for in an apartment. I leaned against my bike, wanting desperately to pedal away. Not being able to move. I should have helped. I could have priced things. Sold things. Arranged. But I was stuck. Stuck in our ending.

It took a few apartments on Jefferson Street, but we got there. We got to our beginning. Filled our closets. Filled our hearts. Made new traditions. Embraced the beauty of the impermanence, and just began to live. Keeping our hearts full of Christmas, we hung the purple, green and gold of Mardi Gras.

Change is inevitable. It is constant. It can be difficult. It will be. But the colors. The colors of it all can be —. so very beautiful! And so we begin. And begin again.

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Welcome to the garden.

I was born in the springtime, every year. I can’t say that I’ve ever been much for New Year’s Eve. Sure, I’ll enjoy a glass of champagne and kiss in the beginning of the coming year, but for me, it doesn’t hold the magic of spring.

When the birds start to sing a little louder, the light lasts a little longer, the trees open up their branches in bloom, this, this for me, is intoxicating.

Our apricot and plum trees are covered in flowers. It is pure art. Coy as the Mona Lisa smile, the bloom says, well, I promised, and here I am. They just can’t stop smiling, and neither can I. I want to clean fresh, create new, enjoy every moment of this life. I am born again, for the first time and I too want to bloom.

The air smells not just clean, but sweet, and I feel lighter. Each step has just a bit of a bounce and I know none of it is to be wasted. I want, I need, to take that bounce and toss it against the page, the canvas, the hearts around me and follow it wherever it leads. I, we, get another fresh start. What a gift! I skip to the song of the birds, and know that I am new.