The Mothership
I step out of my Mom’s house in Port Isabel, Texas. The air feels like a weighted blanket of heat and vapor. Her massive garden rises all around, twelve to twenty feet high, with soaring banana leaves, enormous monstera, and cascading bougainvillea. Like I’ve seen her do my whole life, she has culled from the earth an incredible bounty - full of layers and shapes and color.
Mexican-flag colored string lights hang down from the driveway. I walk past the garden, onto the street, and toward the water - two blocks away. The residential neighborhood is quiet, with a few kids’ toys laid about on grass lawns. Small brick houses with whirring AC units, the occasional dog behind a fence.
The water is an inlet, connected to the bay side of South Padre Island and several miles away from the breaking waves of the Gulf. The water appears thick and green and dark. Along the edge is a seafood wholesaler in a low slung building. Below that is a shrimping boat with a large man at the wheel. He seems pleased and smiles up at me as if to say, “wanna go?”
I take a seat at the picnic table and strain my eyes to the Southern horizon. I know where to look, based on prior visits. There, a couple miles away, I can see a large building next to some narrower structures: SpaceX. Specifically, SpaceX Starbase – where dozens of engineers build massive, next-generation rockets for launching cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars.
Starbase is so close to Mexico, that I imagine employees could walk down to the US-Mexico border and sit on the banks of the Rio Grande. I doubt anybody does though. Grassy marshlands, clouds of mosquitoes, and herds of prickly pear... you’d have to be looking for a fight.
During my visits here, I’ve heard the locals talk about SpaceX. The sounds they hear when tests are being conducted. The times when they might see a rocket launch. Or the talk of real estate prices and rent hikes. At the edge of town, next to the Walmart and an RV park, a billboard blares, “Beach & Beyond!” with a picture of a rocket ship next to some beach towels.
It’s interesting to think about what people build. The size, the scope, the purpose. There is that which we don’t have – and we reach to. The moon, the stars, the planets. And there is that which we have – and quickly leave behind. The earth, the water, the plants.
While it’s unlikely we will colonize a new planet in our lifetime, the one we have is in dire need of preservation. Imagine what might happen if the amount of money, technology, and innovation that is going into SpaceX were directed at something like, say, fresh drinking water. Just two states away, 150,000 residents of Jackson, Mississippi are in crisis.
At the end of my trip, I arrange for a local taxi to take me to the airport. Before dawn, a woman driver pulls up in a minivan. She’s speaking both Spanish and English into the radio, tracking dispatches. Afterwards, we get to talking. She recognized my Mom’s house, and guessed that I was her daughter. “Your Mom,” she says… “One time she gave me a beautiful plant. No flowers, just beautiful leaves,” and she made the shape of the leaves with her hands.
As we drive through the dark toward the airport, I think about my Mom’s garden – growing, reaching upward to the stars. What miracle of life is this? Right here on Earth. The Mothership.
*** 🌿Post-script for the gardeners. My Mom’s favorite TX plants include:
Variegated Shell Ginger or Alpinia Zerumbet Varigata
Bougainvillea
Liriope Big Blue
Delonix Regia or Royal Poinciana
Rhapsody Excelsior or Lady Palm
Canna, Black Knight
Various ferns
Birdsnest Anthurium
Banana
Pseudo-bombax or Shaving Brush Tree
Zamia Furfuracae or Cardboard Palm
