Winging It

Joanne Jowell

Description

Jonathan Kaplan, celebrated international rugby referee and former world record-holder for most Test caps, had his fair share of challenging moments on the field. He was known for his commitment to fair play, ability to defuse tense situations, and courage in making difficult, and sometimes controversial, decisions. All this would stand JK in good stead and come back into play when, at the age of 47, he made two life-changing decisions. The first was to blow his whistle for the last time and end his career as a professional rugby ref. The second was to become a parent – and a solo parent at that.

This is the story of JK’s decision to have a baby by surrogate, the two-year fertility process that followed, and the subsequent birth of his son Kaleb.Winging It draws on the insights of key role-players in JK’s journey, including the extraordinary experience of the surrogate mother herself. Exchanging rucks for reflux, mauls for milk bottles, scrums for storks (and other stories about Kaleb’s conception), this account of how JK navigates the choppy waters of parenthood is disarmingly frank and scrupulously honest. At times poignant and tender, and at others downright funny, this is a thoroughly contemporary take on what constitutes a family and how we dare to build one.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• General officer
• Parenting
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770105577
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Also by Joanne Jowell
On the Other Side of Shame: An Extraordinary Account of Adoption and Reunion (2008)
‘Joanne Jowell … has got the whole country talking … we’re talking raw emotion, the stuff that gets books turned into movies … On the Other Side of Shame is not just an amazingly well-written read, it’s one of those fabulous – just can’t put it down – better get the tissues out kind of book!’
– Rave Review blog, www.ravereview.co.za
Finding Sarah: A True Story of Living with Bulimia (2011)
‘Sarah’s story is compelling … an in-depth narrative that illustrates the complexities of living with this illness more than any other account I have read or experienced in my 30 years of practice.’
– Dorianne Weil, ‘Dr D’, Clinical Psychologist
The Crazy Life of Larry Joe: A Journey on the Streets and Stage (2014)
‘A fascinating biography about the deeper seams of a real man and the threads of an inner life that both horrifies and inspires.’
– True Love

Winging It
Jonathan Kaplan’s Journey from World-Class Ref to Rookie Solo Dad
Joanne Jowell
MACMILLAN

First published in 2018
by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag x 19
Northlands
2116
Johannesburg
South Africa
www.panmacmillan.co.za
isbn 978-1-77010-556-0
e- isbn 978-1-77010-557-7
© Joanne Jowell 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The views and opinions expressed by those who feature in this book do not necessarily reflect those of either the author or publisher.
Editing by Alison Lowry
Proofreading by Lisa Compton
Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg
Cover design by K4
Author photograph by Russell Smith

For T-Dog, because if you don’t ask, you don’t get. You asked, so ...
With my love – steady and absolute – in these changing seasons.


Contents
author’s note
chapter 1 Of bulldogs, bonsais and babies
chapter 2 The bull
chapter 3 The lioness
chapter 4 A road without a map
chapter 5 The exes
chapter 6 Single and straight
chapter 7 More than just a job
chapter 8 How do you like your eggs?
chapter 9 About the money
chapter 10 Not your average match-making
chapter 11 How do you give a baby away?
chapter 12 The ‘f’ words
chapter 13 It’s in the pipeline
chapter 14 This is it
chapter 15 Tell the world
chapter 16 Jewish by choice
chapter 17 An unlikely threesome
chapter 18 1/6/16
chapter 19 The ultimate prize
chapter 20 Coming home
chapter 21 Yip, snip and dip
chapter 22 And then … he smiled
chapter 23 My boy Kaleb
chapter 24 This unconventional road
chapter 25 Daddyness
chapter 26 Who is my mom?
chapter 27 The silent partner
chapter 28 Whatever it takes
postscript
acknowledgements
pictures


Author’s note
You know Jonathan Kaplan, right? The rugby ref? Everyone knows Jonathan Kaplan. You don’t even need to know your rucks from your mauls to know Jonathan Kaplan. And even if you think you don’t know him, just one glimpse of the eagle-eyed ball of fire and ice, whistle at the ready, pointer finger poised, lording it over sweaty knots of men three times his size … and you’ll know him.
I know Jonathan Kaplan too. Of course, it helps that he is ‘of the tribe’, so we share acquaintances and possibly ancestry. I have come across him on the social circuit over the years and I’ve seen him conduct a rugby match as if it were an orchestra. Not that I knew what I was looking at as he ran pillion to Schalk and Bismarck at the 2013 Currie Cup final at Newlands. I’m not much of a frequenter of rugby tournaments, though I am game for the occasional 80-minuter, especially if it comes with face paint and boerie rolls.
I know Jonathan Kaplan as you know him. Rugby referee. And we know him as well as Facebook does. We know he is Jewish, loves animals, detests Zuma, adores South Africa, runs marathons, shares videos. You, I and 2 257 other FB friends know this. So when my Facebook feed popped with the image of a foetal scan (universal symbol for ‘pregnancy announcement’) posted by Jonathan, I was happy for him – that benign, altruistic, long-distance type of happy that you feel for people you don’t know but for whom you may as well just wish the best.
I unconsciously filled in the background: he had obviously retired from professional sport, gotten married and started a family. Good for him. Mazeltov. I looked to see who he had tagged on the post, assuming that I’d learn the identity of his new wife that way. No tags. That’s odd. I dug around in his other recent posts but found no mention of a relationship status change there either. Hmmmmm. I clicked on the ultrasound image itself to check for any tell-tale patient names in the top right-hand corner (I’m a mother of three, I know where to look). Nothing. Or at least nothing legible. Curiouser and curiouser. As a last resort I clicked on the post itself to read the comments. Amongst the obvious messages of congratulations was one that cracked the code: ‘Single parenting is way easier … you will be a great dad.’
So the professional single male was about to become a rookie single father: having a baby alone, solo from scratch. I went from being detachedly interested in his pending arrival to downright nosy. Who is the mother? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he gay? Is it his sperm? How will he manage on his own? The vectors of Jewish geography shot out with all due haste and within minutes I had a basic genealogy of the foetus: Jonathan Kaplan was having his baby by surrogate. His sperm. Donor egg. Donor womb. A reproductive triptych so unique it’s almost virginal.
I have three children of my own, and although they were conceived and delivered ‘naturally’, I have my own interest in fertility.
I think it started when I was ten years old and my best friend warned me never to touch the giant wooden statue of a hornbill in her lounge. ‘It can make you have a baby!’ she whispered in furtive caution, apparently afraid that louder words might bring the stork too. Much later, I learned that her fears did hold a measure of truth: the Senufo bird, with its phallic beak and swollen belly, is the hermaphroditic symbol of fertility and continuity for its people. I’m not sure that touching it would have resulted in pregnancy if (a) you were not of Senufo descent and (b) you were of sound mind, but my friend’s stern warning beat any birds-and-bees talk my parents may have delivered, and was enough to set up a lifelong pregnancy paranoia that only abated when I was actually trying to conceive within the safety of marriage, age appropriateness and glass ornaments distinctly un-avian in appearance.
As I moved through adolescence and into adulthood, my fear of pregnancy took me to many a chaste misconception. Maybe you could fall pregnant from kissing, or kissing vigorously. Maybe you could unwittingly will yourself pregnant through dreams or hypnosis. Was conception a languid road trip along small dark byways and twisting alleys, or was it more of a highway dash through a major tollgate? Her womb – a forest, or a meadow? And what about the indefatigable sperm? Just how much propulsion did it need to meet an egg? Could it somehow sneak from outside the body (say on his hand, or hers) through the alley/highway to the forest/meadow, and cause pregnancy days after a snogging session devoid of penetration?
Oh the paranoid mind is fertile territory and it wasn’t until my married friends started having babies that I really got to grips with what it meant to conceive. My first two children came easily. My third took much longer and was preceded by a miscarriage. Over the years, I accompanied too many friends on the desperate quest for fertility. I learned about eggs and sperm and everything in between. I learned about IVF and GIFT and ICSI. I learned about tubes and linings and cycles that have nothing to do with bike mechanics. I learned about morphology and blastocysts and zygotes that have nothing to do with the Greek myths they mimic. Never mind meadow or forest … it’s a jungle out there.
So when Jonathan Kaplan hung up his rugby boots for baby booties – armed with only a whistle and apparently no forest or meadow to speak of – I knew this was a story I wanted to follow, and maybe even write. I paid close attention to the inevitable chatter. I asked people what they thought of his Facebook post and decision to go solo from scratch, and received every possible response, from the joyous, ‘It’s just amazing. It’s really brave,’ to the somewhat defensive, ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t he be able to become a dad if he has the means and the method to do it?’ all the way to, ‘It’s abhorrent. Who would choose to bring a child into a single-parent family, let alone one without a mother? Children need mothers.’
Most thought of Jonathan as a trailblazer – smoothing a path for unconventional families in a world that values diversity and craves ways in which to normalise the alternative or untraditional. But some saw him as a disruptor – a progenitor of a broken family in his inability or unwillingness to create a nuclear one. If Western social conservatism views family as the primary unit of society, then Jonathan’s choice represents the very heart of what ails us: the breakdown of the family.
What did I think about all of this? I forewent my right to comment the minute I si