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PART THREE
Family

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W
ELEVEN
WORKING MOTHER
Lead by example
♦
hen Elon was born, I was twenty-three, the average age of a
mother in 1971. It started with three days of false labor, which
means contractions all day that disappear at night. The birth was
hard, as he had a large head and was a big boy, eight pounds, eight
ounces. I wanted a natural birth without painkillers; I can still feel
the pain.
All the agony was forgotten when he arrived. I was so happy. He
was this little cherub. I couldn’t believe anything was so beautiful. He
would lie next to me, and I would just stare at him.
It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened.
He was a hungry boy, and I was breastfeeding for three months.
He would cry a lot, so at three months, I started supplementing with
half-boiled milk, half-boiled water. By four months, he was pretty
much on to full milk. By five months, he was eating baby cereals.
Then pureed fruit, vegetables, and my normal meals. Elon loved to
eat.
Pretty much the moment I stopped breastfeeding, I fell pregnant
with Kimbal, who was born when I was twenty-four. Kimbal was a
long, skinny guy, weighing a quarter pound more than his big
brother. His was an easier birth. Again, I breastfed for three months,
and when he was too hungry, I moved him on to milk and water, just

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as I had for Elon. I’d lectured to nurses that solids should start at six
months, but my boys were big, so I started them earlier.
Once I wasn’t breastfeeding, a few months later, I was pregnant
again. I had my daughter when I was twenty-five. Tosca weighed a
half pound less than Kimbal. It was a huge surprise and an absolute
joy to have a daughter.
I carried my two younger kids under my arms, while my firstborn
walked next to me. They were a handful, a wonderful handful.
With three births in three years and three weeks, the next time I
went to the OB-GYN, he fitted me for an IUD, because my body
needed to recover. He also could see my bruises.
By thirty-one, I was a single mother, and my priority was to take
care of my children.
I was a working mother just as my parents were working parents.
Unlike my parents, I did it by myself. My children are still the most
important part of my life.

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My mom never felt guilty about working full time. I never felt
guilty about working full time, because I didn’t have a choice. I
worked to keep a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs, and
basic clothes on our backs. My children had to be responsible for
themselves and be considerate of my work, as I had converted a
bedroom into my office. There is no need to feel guilty. If you don’t
work, and you are resentful, it won’t be fun for your kids. To have a
better attitude, you’ll need to make a plan to work either part time or
full time and get help in whatever form you can. If you can arrange
your work schedule so you can take your children and the neighbor’s
children to school, your neighbor can pick them up. You will need
childcare for the afternoon until you come home, but you will come
home happy and fulfilled. That’s what I did.
When my children were young, I counseled my nutrition clients
from home. When I modeled, there was a nanny for them.
Sometimes they had to sit in the front row with their books while I
did my runway shows.
My father always had his chiropractic practice next door, and my
mom worked for him. My twin sister and I worked for him, too, from
the age of eight. We were paid 5 cents an hour to help him mail out
his monthly bulletin. We would have worked for free to help his
business. My dad dictated the bulletin to my mom, who wrote it in
shorthand, then typed it up.
It was our job to type the stencils and make the copies. Then Kaye
and I would sit on the living room floor, fold the bulletin into three,
put it in the envelope, and put the stamp on. We would do about one
thousand of those every month. I was so young back then that I
didn’t even know there was such a thing as a marketing tool, but
that’s what it was. It taught me a lot for my own practice.
When Kaye and I were twelve, we started working in my dad’s
clinic as receptionists. From 6:45 to 7:30 in the morning, and from
4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon, my twin sister and I took turns. We
signed in the patients, made them tea, developed X-rays, and talked
to them until my father was ready to see them.
We were treated like adults who could be trusted.

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My parents’ influence is evident in the lives my siblings and I
chose and the way we raised our own children. My father was a
scientist and ran a business, and I became a scientist and
entrepreneur, and so did my brother Scott. My brother Lee had his
own business school in South Africa, then served as a dean and vice-
president academic at a large technical institution in Canada. My
mother ran a dance school, and my sisters Kaye and Lynne ran dance
schools.
• • •
From a young age, the kids helped me with my nutrition business.
Tosca would go into my office and type up letters to doctors on a
word processor. She would add the doctor’s name and address and
basic greetings as well as the patient’s name, and I would then fill it
out with their consultation and possible outcomes. Elon was very
good at helping to explain the word processor functions to me, not
surprisingly! Kimbal was always helpful, too.

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When we were living in Bloemfontein, I put Tosca to work at the
modeling and image school I was running. She taught students how
to walk, choreographed runway shows, and ran etiquette classes. She
was a dresser for all my shows. She was around eight years old at the
time.
What can I say? I needed help.
• • •
I brought my children up like my parents brought us up when we
were young: to be independent, kind, honest, considerate, and polite,
to work hard and do good things. I didn’t treat them like babies or
scold them. I never told them what to study. They just let me know
what they were studying, or didn’t. I didn’t check their homework;
that was their responsibility. It certainly hasn’t hurt their careers. I
think my siblings and I benefited, and my children benefited from
taking responsibility early on.
As they got older, they continued to take responsibility for their
own futures through the decisions they made. Tosca chose her own
high school. They all applied to their universities of choice and
completed their scholarship and student loan applications. I never
even saw them.
Children don’t need to be protected from the reality of
responsibility. My kids benefited because they saw me work hard just
to put a roof over our heads, put food in our stomachs, and purchase
secondhand clothes. They want you to know how much I struggled,
as life looks so easy for me now.
When they went to university, they lived in quite poor conditions,
mattress on the floor, six housemates, or a dilapidated house, but
they were fine with that.
If your children aren’t used to luxuries, they survive well. You
don’t need to spoil them. Once you’re sure your kids are in safe
situations, let them look after themselves.
• • •

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Being busy with my work did mean that they had freedom to get into
antics sometimes, and I’m guessing I still know only some of the
stories. (I like to think I was stern if they were irresponsible, but they
would tell you I was a pushover.)
The kids remind me that when I was dating someone who was a
smoker—and they didn’t like him very much, as we were a very anti-
smoking household—they put little firecrackers in his cigarettes. He
lit one up, and it went BANG! They laughed and laughed. I thought it
was quite funny, too. He didn’t laugh. They never got punished for
that.
It isn’t that I didn’t discipline them. I punished them if they were
loud or naughty. They would have TV taken away from them or be
sent to their room. Although now they tell me that when they were
sent to their room, they would sneak back through the house and
record their favorite TV shows on the old VHS and then run back to
their rooms so that they didn’t miss The A-Team or MacGyver. I
would be in my office and would not notice that.
That’s another benefit, they would say, to having a working
mother.

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P
TWELVE
THE MAGIC OF TWELVE