Jodi Hills

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


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Warmer still.

When I write, I like to think of this as a thermos. Somehow it knows the temperature. Certain things I write to release, let them cool. Others, to keep them close, forever warmed in my heart. And the words seem to know their role. Without explanation, they do the work. I trust my thermos.

Now some may feel the need to explain the science behind it, but I don’t need to know. Don’t really even want to. I don’t want to explain the life right out of the flower on the side of the road. Nor the strokes of the painting. I just want to trust in the feel of them. Keep them unlocked. Open.

My first thermos was something my brother made in shop class. It was a glass jar packed with styrofoam — quite possibly illegal now, but I thought it was something special. I took it off the basement shelf. It made its way to where all barks of trees adorned with faux flowers, potholders and lanyards strung at camp to sway the homesickness, and any other homespun or school project went to rest, too precious to throw immediately they sat in basement purgatory. Of course I painted that thermos. Big bold stripes to match the flowers on my bicycle basket. It fit perfectly. Had he made two, I could have tested them at the same time, but having just the one, I had to take ice water on my ride one day, and Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup the next. 

Perhaps my memory is kept warmer still than the soup ever was, but I can feel it, the heat of noodles slipping down my throat, perhaps only yards from our house on Vandyke Road, balancing my bike between my legs and drinking on the path of Hugo’s field. I had made my own lunch in summer’s sun. My heart is the wicker basket that carries the thermos that knows somehow, to keep it warm. And I am saved.

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Packed.

When she was reporting on a full time basis, the writer Joan Didion said she used to have this dossier taped to her door. It was a packing list of what to bring — a list she could quickly check off without thinking, and begin her journey. I love it because I find myself doing the same thing. Not for a suitcase, but for my heart, my mind. 

Challenges rarely announce themselves, they merely show up at the door, so I need my list ready. I don’t want to think about it. It goes a little something like this:

Are you in immediate danger?   No.

Are you physically hurt?  No.

Are you capable?   Yes.

Are you loved?   Yes.

Do you love?   Yes.

Is life still good?   Yes.

Do you want to keep going?   Yes.

What haven’t you survived?   Nothing.

Packed, I reach for the door handle, and begin.

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Oh, Elsie.

Playing the tourist, I’ve taken countless photos in back of them — The figures of what the town represents. How joyfully and eagerly becoming them. From Superman to the hatted women of Brittany, I have placed my head and heart behind. It’s just that simple, I suppose, to stand in someone’s shoes, so why do we find it so difficult to do?

Empathy. It takes some time to build. We see people as we label them. Grandma, then Grandma Elsie, she was a woman of this world. Not simply a soft belly for me to land upon. She was young and beautiful. Small in waist and big in dreams, she kissed the boy behind the Alexandria hotel. And carried those dreams from heels to Thom Mcann’s. Painting her, seeing her, now, she is not hidden behind apron.

I hear the conversations. Oh, how she loved to visit. From grocery store line, to card table, I can hear the smiling replies, “Oh, Elsie…” they would say in delight. They saw her, so I could see her, and now I can’t look away. She, they, taught me how to gently tourist in the hearts of others.

And isn’t that empathy — those who go out and see, first, so we all can see, ever.

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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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Small magic. Tiny mercies.

Maybe if they were too big, we wouldn’t be able to fly at all. That’s what I tell myself as I celebrate the small magic moments of each day.

On my phone, I replaced my friend’s icon that was simply her initials, with a picture of my first bird woman. I can’t say why exactly. It just felt right. I’ve had it that way for months, but I only told her yesterday. When I showed her the picture, she beamed. “You have no way of knowing this,” she said, “but ever since I was a little girl I imagined that I had bird friends that would follow me around and speak to me.” 

This is the magic I cling to. It weighs nothing, and even more, lifts me higher. 

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Moving forward.

Some things you simply know, even before Google confirms it.  

I love birds. I love Sparrows. I guess because they’ve always just been around. Maybe it was that assurance I gravitated toward — before, during, after the storm, they were constant. Like my grandparents. Like my mother. 

They pop up in my sketchbook consistently. Almost knowing when I need them most — when I need that blessed assurance. Yesterday one arrived atop my image of our coffee pot. A reminder, I suppose, that just as certain as the coffee I brew each morning. Love wafts on the scent of it throughout our home. 

I googled them after breakfast — the sparrows. This is what it said — “They are creatures of quiet resilience, navigating storms, finding shelter where there is none, and moving forward even when the winds push them back.” Isn’t that the way that I, we, could begin each day, with this quiet resilience… There’s coffee on the table, and kindness in the air. 

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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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Becoming the ocean.

I think even then, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for it, it felt like I was in it.

I didn’t use the front door of our house on Van Dyke Road. But I did use the stoop — the set of cement stairs that faced the gravel. I would perch there. Knowing a car might pass going to town. Or a truck to the North End. A Dynda hanging laundry. A Schulz boy up to no good. A Norton girl on bicycle, on foot. A Weiss getting the mail. A Mullen racing from the sound of their mother’s call. 

Even motionless, I could feel the river’s ripple. Weren’t we all a part of this movement toward the ocean? Khalil Gabran tells us “It’s not about disappearing into the ocean but of becoming the ocean.” I didn’t have the words for it then, and yet the water lapped against my bare feet. Perhaps change is the hardest now when I forget the water and find myself waiting. Waiting for the change that will bring all the relief, the “I’ll be happy when…” It’s not until my formerly chubby toes wiggle and say, you’re already in it… that’s all, you’re in it. I smile, and let myself become. 

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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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The direction of home.

I never noticed how much it looked like a little nest, the tuft of hair on top of a cow’s head. I guess the bird knew before I did, and it showed me how to find its way home. 

I’ve never lived on a farm, nor even in the country. Yet, I’m trying to count, this morning, the amount of times I have been connected to another human, simply by a cow. Of course, my grandparents. Uncles and overalls and electric fences. I’ve sold four original paintings of cows. Three in Minneapolis and one in France. After finishing this cow yesterday, I sent it to my friend in Minnesota. She told me how her father, the week before his passing, wanted to simply watch and listen to the cows on his farm. He was showing her, how to find his way home. 

If a cow can do all that, certainly we could do that for each other, be the nest, or at least the direction of home. 

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