A nature-loving Cybertruck driver
And moms as mountains.
Over the weekend, I was driving along a winding bayside road when I saw a Cybertruck pulled over on the shoulder. The trunk was popped open and a woman sat crouched inside of it, holding a camera with a telephoto lens angled up toward the sky. She was taking a photo of an Osprey and its baby in a nest atop a power line pole.
And she was doing it while trying to camoflauge herself in her Cybertruck.
I had been preparing to shoot a judgmental eye at this person who had spent $70,000 on a vehicle that is not only the ugliest car I have ever seen in my entire life, but also, to my mind, a symbol of autocracy, human cruelty, and the death of democracy. Then my judgmental eye was met with the telephoto lens and the baby bird.
I could barely process the disjunctures of the scene before my car had rounded the corner.
A Cybertruck owner who is also a dedicated lover of nature? I wanted to find a metaphor there—something about the coexistence of beauty and ugliness in this larger political moment. Something about having to regularly encounter news of dark, amoral, and dystopian shit, while also trying to actively cultivate hope, joy, and connection in daily life.
Anyway, I rounded that corner and drove on to my destination: a collection of standalone wooden saunas perched above a pebbled beach. I had booked a last-minute reservation that morning after realizing that my neck and shoulders were tightening into a crazy knot—because of course they were. The next day was Mother’s Day.
My mom died over a decade ago, and I know by now that this holiday will never just be about celebrating my own motherhood; it will always be equally defined by my motherlessness. Sometimes, though, my body has to remind me of this fact. Hey, psst, you should probably stop avoiding the flipside of the mother coin.
So, some heat for my knotted muscles.
I stepped into my personal sauna with a rounded window looking out at Mount Tam. As I write this, I am also looking out at Mount Tam. It’s always there, and always has been there, my whole life in the Bay Area. I’m reminded now that in my upcoming memoir I write about how that mountain has become a more constant figure than even my mom.
It’s still shocking to see her outlived by this landscape that I love so much. I am grateful that it persists, though. On one of her last days alive, she had my dad take her down to the waterfront in Berkeley. I don’t know if she knew that the end was near, but I know that the short drive to the water was hard and painful with her lungs and bones ravaged by cancer. I know that it felt worth it, still.
In the sauna, I looked out at the bay and the mountain. I sweated and cried—not an active sob, just a steady leaking of tears. I stopped being able to tell what was sweat and what was tears.
Eventually, I walked down to the beach and dunked myself in the icy bay. I floated there, watching water pour out of the holes of my Crocs every time I brought a foot above the surface. A pair of white egrets flew by.
Afterward, I laid on a lounger in the sun reading a book without putting any sunscreen on my chest. I figured I was just going to stay there a little bit longer. I got the kind of bright pink burn that I have only ever had a couple times in my life. That, too, feels like it should be a metaphor. The rawness and tenderness.
This week, I keep pressing my fingertips into the burn, watching it turn white before going pink again.
As I left, I noticed that the Cybertruck was gone, but the Osprey and the baby were still there in their nest. Those nests are ridiculous. Have you seen them? Just massive. They always make me think of Big Bird’s nest. I drove home, between the sparkling beauty of the bay and a hillside overtaken by a Chevron oil-refinery known for polluting the air of its surrounding communities. More coexisting opposites.
That evening, my 7-year-old got mad at me, ostensibly because I wouldn’t read him an extra book before bedtime. Then he wrote me a note saying that he hoped I had the worst Mother’s Day of my entire life. He totally changed his tune the next day, but I think that there’s something a little destabilizing for him about my grief around Mother’s Day. He wants me to be his mountain, you know? Be the fucking mountain, Mom. I get it.
When my mom was alive, she was my sense of safety and belonging in the world. Without her, I’ve had to rely more on the world itself, on literal mountains. In a way, though, that is her—I learned to orient myself that way from watching her do it. “Bring me to the water,” she told my dad in her last days of life. And, oh god, now I’m thinking again about that fucking Cybertruck driver and the Ospreys that caught her eye. We all need our mountains.
Gorgeous. 🫀
Beautiful Tracy.