We had our book group the other night and it went so well, one of the better discussions we’ve had in a long time. I was really interested to see if there would be a big difference in how other people dealt with the style of the writing and how it sort of jumped back and forth. I know sometimes that gets to me but not always. I remember reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout and it drove me crazy. But as I reread your book, I realized it didn’t bother me in the least. In fact I enjoyed it that way! Most rather liked the way that you knew each page would have its own story even if you weren’t exactly sure of the timeline. They felt what I think you were feeling and struggling with. And the way you handled the characters–specifically no names–they thought was an interesting detail. One person in our group, a retired pediatrician turned independent bookstore owner who has pursued some writing classes and general knowledge of what goes into writing a book, said she was glad to read it, that it was something quite different from some of the books we’ve read, and very much a pleasure to read. Funny how people in your book had been in the house we held our meeting in. I sort of felt like they were all sitting in listening. For me it doesn’t get any better than that!
Note the Charcuterie utensils by the food, I used the ones I make. (see more of her beautiful glass art here.)
There is so much about this book club gathering and the photos and the letter that makes me feel grateful and happy, and moves me–like the way I feel right there with them when I see my handwriting saying I am home. at the table next to the playing cards on the glass–and that brings memories of love and laughter floating from the other room of the cottage while my parents and friends played Euchre on summer nights. The mention of Elizabeth Strout reminds me of taking my mother to a reading in Iowa City and sitting in the front row and introducing her to my mom, and how E.S.’s hand went to her heart as she said, you brought your mom. And how Mom whispered to me, she’s just like one of us.
Sant Jordi, or Saint George, is one of Barcelona’s patron saints and he is celebrated on April 23rd each year. The streets of the city fill with stalls celebrating authors, and selling books and roses. It is a romantic and cultural festivity on what is now also World Book Day. To demonstrate their love, people gift each other books and roses.
I am looking forward to this hour on this coming Saturday at noon to join in the celebration. If you know folks in the Garraf district of Barcelona who are interested in writing as a spiritual path and the search for home, and who like to read in English, would you please tell them about this gathering on Saturday in this special place which is an oasis?
It means a lot to me to talk about writing as a spiritual path in the place where my path took me for a decade while I lived in Sitges in–what seems like eons ago sometimes–the late 90s and early 21st century. I received a lot of nourishment and inspiration here.
Another from KK’s list of Scintillating Sentences. In the pages of I am home., Marianne often takes risks to live her life wholly. This is one of the storylines which explores the cost of freedom and the power of yes and no.
Another from KK’s list of Scintillating Sentences. This is a snippet of conversation between the visionary and Marianne. Read the book and find out if Marianne achieved this aim. You can even enjoy surfing the rough waters with her. Steady now.
I am home. is about freedom and what it means to be a free spirit in this increasingly systemized world. It travels non-linearly through time and place with a 49 year-old long-married woman, mother, daughter, writer, teacher, model/actress, and doctoral student who is in for surprises when she returns to her Iowa hometown after spending the adult half of her life abroad.
Stop in at River Lights and do all your Christmas shopping this year. This is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. It’s about more than books, just like books are. Find great gift ideas in every corner of the store and enjoy the warm and welcome atmosphere. I am thrilled that I am home. is on the shelves in this place where I feel very much at home. The setting for I am home., this non-fiction tale, is Dubuque, Key West, and many other places in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and across the United States of America. You can also travel to Iceland, France, and Spain within. It’s a story that shows it is possible to go home again, and to leave home again, and to carry it with you always, and have a great time doing it despite all the challenges. You will laugh and you will cry. And maybe even think about things in a different way. It is a gift of light and love, this book, and thus fits with the season.
After you leave the bookstore with all your Christmas shopping in the bag, stop and enjoy other great places nearby like L. May Eatery, Salsa’s Mexican Restaurant , and Jitterz, where I wrote a lot, and had great conversations. I miss all that. I’ll be back.
Is there someone on your Christmas list who likes to read? Who enjoys true stories? Who loves home, and loves to travel, and wonders about how others live in the world and what freedom costs? Who loves Iowa? Who especially loves the Upper Mississippi Valley of Iowa? And loves and wonders about Spain and Iceland and France? Who loves driving? Who loves rivers, valleys, and being in the great outdoors? Who loves life, family, friends? Who loves to walk, dance, and swim? Who sees beauty everywhere? Who appreciates absurd humor? And sees the humor in even the difficult moments? They will probably also love this book.
It has been called a book about the wideness of love, a book about what it means to be a free spirit in this world, and a book about what it means to be home. It has been called a memoir hiding inside other genres. It has been called amazing, brilliant, heartbreaking, enthralling, relevant, resonant, brave, inspiring, moving, insightful, incisive, beautifully written, and soothing.
If you’ve read and enjoyed it, please spread the word. If you haven’t read it yet, please give it a chance. It would be wonderful if you asked your library to order it.
If I could afford it, I would hand out copies everywhere.
Here, at this desk, looking at this view, I smile thinking about how writing and reading connect me to other souls who are also interested in being as alive as we can be. I imagine these people believe that life is a chance to exalt and contribute.
“They are your contribution to humanity,” a friend said recently when I wondered about the value of my books and the time spent writing them.
Happy Thanksgiving! I am in Spain, craving warm fixings with loved ones, and giving thanks for family, friendship, resilience, and growth.
This is plant that adorns the cover of I am home. It was given to my mother in 1952 at the birth of her firstborn, a son, Tommy. I only knew him through stories and photos because he died, at 8, before I was born. In the family we called it Tommy’s Plant, and sometimes I called it the Tommy Mommy Plant, and recently I have been calling it Millie’s Beanstalk. I guess I could call it Marianne’s Beanstalk because I would likely have been the child to trade the cow for the magic beans. I love that Mom is in it, the whole family is in it.
The image of the plant in the middle is recent, here in Barcelona at home. The drawing on the right is how it started in 2005 in Sitges, when I brought a cutting of it from Mom’s plant back to Sitges. That’s also a recent shot, of course, with the book in the plant’s arms. That globe on the cover is the World Book one we had at home and I often dreamed about traveling all over it.
The long story short is that I gave the plant to a friend when I went back to live in Iowa in 2012. Before I did, I took a cutting from that plant, carried it with me, and re-rooted it in Dubuque. It lived with me there, and in Chicago, Iowa City, and Los Angeles. I added some roots of another immense dieffenbachia I saw thriving in the offices of the memory care center where Mom died..
The plant never quite thrived and multiplied in the USA in the same vigorous manner it did in Sitges, but it stayed alive and shone. In 2021-2022, I spent six months back in Europe and left it outside in the garden where I lived in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, where I have seen many dieffenbachia thrive. Looking through the photos now, I notice that it started to decline most seriously when my son moved to France from LA. He also loved that plant. I was sad to learn of its death in the spring when I returned, and told myself that 70 years was a good life, and everything must die, I guess.
That summer, I traveled to Iowa and when I walked into a brother’s house in Dubuque, his wife said, “Marianne, do you remember when you moved to LA and you left us a cutting of your mom’s plant? Look at it now,” she pointed. “But something weird is going on with the leaves.”
“It lives!” I said, raising my arms in the air and rushing toward it. The sister next to me grabbed my hand to stop me from separating the leaves that had attached to each other at the tips–both their own and that of others nearby–and weren’t unfurling because they were blocked by that attachment.
“Wait, let me count them before you do that,” my sister said, and she counted seven. “I knew it. That’s the number of Mom’s children.”
“Well, let me free them,” I said, chuckling, and showing my sister-in-law how to gently detach them both from themselves and others nearby so they could unfurl on their own. “It happens sometimes, they get too close or turn in too much as they grow and you just have to give them enough room so they don’t.”
what they looked like after separation, ready to unfurl on their ownIt would have worked better if I had cut more from the base.
I took a cutting of that plant back to Los Angeles with me. It was a long, adventurous drive, and the Tommy Mommy plant cutting made it but didn’t last long once there. It was a month or so later, as I was pondering a return to Barcelona to live and walking around Silver Lake one afternoon, when a friend I met in Sitges, who now lives in Northern California called. “Marianne, I have to tell you something. Do you remember that plant of your mom’s you left with me when you went back to Iowa?” I couldn’t speak, just hmmed. “Well, you should see it now,” she said. “It’s huge. The woman renting my house just sent me a picture.”
I had forgotten I gave it to her. And I took it as a sign. And here I am in Barcelona, and here is the plant. We’re together again. It’s difficult to take my eyes off her.
I’d like to tell you more about Tommy and plan to make a book about him and his short life. I wrote some about him in I am home. He was born with a lot of physical obstacles. Here are some photos of a much larger selection, kept safe in a sturdy gray box with TOMMY, in Dad’s handwriting, on top.
“Be glad you can see, sit, stand, walk, and talk, just be glad you have a body that works like yours does,” Mom used to say when I complained about my unfortunate life sometimes.
Sweet news via Chez Soi Press. I love knowing I am home. will be on the shelf in the Iowa City Public Library, one of the many places where I worked on it.
I moved to Iowa City from Chicago with a first draft completed (started in Dubuque and written throughout the Midwest, Iceland, France, and Spain then completed in Chicago on a fine day in May, hours before I did a reading and presentation of Lucy, go see. at the wonderful 3rd Coast Café).
When I left Iowa City nine months later to move to Los Angeles, the fifth, or was it the sixth, or maybe the seventh? draft went with me. Anyway, there were more drafts to come until I finished it there on the Pacific with the Angels. And here I am with the fox in Barcelona. We made it this far home.
Marianne Maili 