It’s hard to believe, but the family of Elon Musk – today officially the world’s wealthiest man – were once penniless. Elon’s mother, Maye, would worry about how to pay the monthly rent.
This was because Maye was a divorcee in conservative Pretoria, raising her children, Elon, Kimbal and Tosca, ‘mostly on my own’. Her former husband, Errol, refused to pay alimony – and comes across in this book as a total monster who ‘gave me my first bruises on our honeymoon’.
From Saskatchewan originally, Maye had moved with her parents to South Africa when a toddler. She remembers camping in the Kalahari and being menaced by hyenas – but Errol, whom she married in 1970, when she was only 22, was worse than any hyena.
Model: Maye has been hired for fashion shows, parading up and down the catwalk, six outfits in 30 minutes
Errol created an atmosphere of menace. He was ‘immediately aggressive and controlling’, punching Maye’s arms, knocking her to the ground, and telling her in public she was ‘slow and incompetent’. He stopped her from having contact with her own parents, as ‘abusers will often try to shut out the people who might help you’.
When the divorce eventually went through, after nine years, Errol turned up in Maye’s flat brandishing a knife.
Maye tells us, ‘I became quiet, introverted.’ She managed to qualify as a nutritionist, gaining a Masters degree, becoming an expert in amino acids, kidney function, diabetes and the biochemical reactions that break down and release the energy stored in food. It was a struggle, trying to earn a living while setting up her dietary practice.
Against this volatile, unhappy background (‘We all lived in fear of Errol’s temper’) Elon was, and who can blame him, ‘socially awkward’. He was, says his mother, ‘a total bookworm’, though books and encyclopaedias soon gave way to video games and computers. Physics and maths came easily to him, and ‘he was often quiet and lost in thought’. He did not make friends easily, seeming not to need them.
Wanting to put her energies into bringing up and nurturing her children, Maye took the big step of returning to Canada. ‘Living with little income and lots of hope is better than being scared and miserable forever,’ she reasons in this memoir.
By 1989, Maye had built up a successful consultancy, giving advice on eating disorders, in conjunction with doctors, hospitals and gyms. Elon and Kimbal, meanwhile, had set their sights on Silicon Valley, where they’d soon become significant innovators.
Starting out in a decrepit office, sleeping on the floor and using the toilet facilities at the YMCA, Elon and his brother created online city guides, with door-to-door directions and interactive maps. Maye, who visited as often as possible, did the laundry, the shopping, and covered basic office expenses, such as equipment and printing.
In 1999, the business was sold for $307 million. Maye’s reaction was to behave as if nothing had changed. ‘We washed and ironed all the sheets, made the beds, laundered the towels, vacuumed the carpet.’ In fact, her sons were now able to buy her an apartment in New York and a puppy. ‘As dog lovers, we must learn to accept we’ll have 12 years of absolute joy, two years of vet’s bills, then devastating, heartbreaking loss.’ Incidentally, if there have been any men in Maye’s life since Errol, she doesn’t mention them.
Model mum: Maye with Elon. Even when her son's sold their business for $307 million, Maye’s reaction was to behave as if nothing had changed. ‘We washed and ironed all the sheets, made the beds, laundered the towels, vacuumed the carpet.’
Elon and Kimbal were not destined to remain partners, as they’d physically fight, ‘and I had to pull them apart’, says Maye. ‘This behaviour had to change if they were going to keep leading companies.’
Kimbal went off to Colorado to be a chef and run restaurants. (Tosca, in her turn, went to Hollywood to be a producer.) Elon’s destiny we know. He started an online bank, which became PayPal. He bought Twitter. As a green energy pioneer, he owns Tesla, developing electric cars, solar power and rockets. ‘To this day, he hardly sleeps,’ says his mother – though the insomnia has provoked health scares, jaundice, fever, and a nasty strain of malaria.
In person, Elon is seemingly shy, but actually ruthless, quick to sack colleagues, and incapable of sustaining warm, personal relationships. His controversial far-Right political views Maye chooses to ignore. He is simply ‘hyper-focused on what matters most to him’, which these days is AI technologies.
Having moved to America, Maye had to re-sit all her exams, if she was to be registered as a dietician. She was soon respected enough for her advice to be printed on cereal boxes. But there was another string to her bow. Deciding no longer to dye her hair, to allow it to remain white, and cutting it in ‘a sharp new bob’, Maye was offered work as a model.
Timeless is out now
Agencies were keen for her to become the face of the ‘strong, beautiful and relevant’ older female. Maye has appeared on magazine covers, in catalogues, and has made advertisements. She has been hired for fashion shows, parading up and down the catwalk, six outfits in 30 minutes.
Maye has been flown all over the world for location shoots, has even been on a billboard in Times Square, and has done some discreet nude photographs. She is now a regular invitee at the exclusive Met Gala, made a fuss over by Anna Wintour.
Hence, Maye’s philosophy, built from her hard-won experience, and which should be carved in stone above the entrance to old folks’ homes: ‘Possibility doesn’t dim with age, it sharpens.’
She is, on the evidence of Timeless, an exceptional mother and person, full of vibrancy and resource. At 78, she is unpushy, sympathetic and thoughtful. ‘I set goals, stayed curious, and kept going.’