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.”
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.
Marianne Maili 