Winging It: Jonathan Kaplan's Journey from World-Class Ref to Rookie Solo Dad

By Joanne Jowell and Jonathan Kaplan

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781770105577

Joanne Jowell

Joanne Jowell is the author of the bestselling biographies On the Other Side of Shame: An Extraordinary Account of Adoption and Reunion (2009), Finding Sarah: A True Story of Living with Bulimia (2011) and The Crazy Life of Larry Joe: A Journey on the Streets and Stage (2014). She lives in Cape Town with her husband and three children.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Of bulldogs, bonsais and babies

Bulldogs. Bonsais. Babies. Jonathan Kaplan’s top three priorities in life. Or at least that’s how it is when I first meet JK (we’ll call him JK from now on, because that’s what his friends call him and we’ve already established that we’re all friends here).

In accordance with the current pecking order, I meet the bulldogs first when I arrive at JK’s house on 30 August 2016 for our initial interview. It’s all slobbers and snorts as I am greeted by JK’s three canine besties, each one as wide as the passage they’re blocking. There’s Lola (the matriarch, who gets by on personality rather than looks), Dexter (the stud, who gets by on both, despite his perpetually oozing eye) and Patat (the candidate for Best in Show). It’s a good thing I’m an animal lover as there is no access to JK’s house or heart without genuine affection for these three gatekeepers.

The benign Cerberus leads me through a courtyard stacked high with bonsais, to the back entrance of the house, and into the kitchen where JK is carefully pruning a miniature tree with all the precision and finesse of an haute couturier. At first glance, I’m struck by the incongruity of the scene in which the meaty paws of a professional rugby ref fine-tune a little shrub, but I soon become aware of a neat symmetry in it too. The tree is short and stocky, like the dogs, like the man. Outwardly solid; inwardly sensitive. Can survive the rain, but thrives in the sun. Built to last.

The baby is asleep upstairs so I watch the morning movements of the other family members while I wait for JK to finish pruning. The open-plan kitchen is separated from the rest of the house by a baby safety-gate, clearly in place to limit the roaming of the dogs rather than the newborn. The bulldogs move around the kitchen space with practised choreography, needing only a single word in a telling tone from JK to shift direction. They wander in and out of the yard, ensconced by shelves of bonsais set just above their nose height.

I clear a small space for my papers on the dining room table covered with JK’s iPad, notebooks, marathon log and muslin burp cloths. A crackling noise comes down the stairs. It’s the white noise rustle of the baby monitor perched on top of the inevitable mountain of newborn laundry that Zonke, the domestic worker, is bringing to the washing machine. She greets me quietly and steers a pathway through the bulldogs to the bottle steriliser that JK is using to balance his cutting shears.

Five minutes later, satisfied with the styling job, JK moves the bonsai to a corner of dappled sunlight where the plant can ‘get the rest it needs’. He fills the dogs’ water bowls, hands each of them a chewing treat, and checks his cellphone. Then he comes to sit, puts his phone face-down on the dining table, and looks straight through me.

It is a look I will come to know well, mainly through misinterpretation. It’s not that he isn’t seeing or hearing what’s in the foreground of the stare. It’s that he is.

Jonathan

Every story needs context.

My story – or at least my professional one – has been written, and I wouldn’t want to rehash it, but the new story needs its background. Even though I have recounted my past in detail in my other book, it is relevant in a different way for this book, my son’s story.

My nature is to scratch, to go beneath the surface. This can’t just be an earthy life, it has to be an emotional one. Karma. Olam haba [the Jewish concept of ‘the world to come’]. Whatever you want to call it. I grew up with the Jewish perspective on life, its origins and where it’s heading. Later I became interested in astrology and the esoteric view, when I started to live in a more secular way.

So I was born in Durban.

I was seven days late and eventually came out in the early evening, just after 7pm, on 7 November 1966. My mom was in labour for a long time, almost splitting open because I had a very big head. They took me out with forceps and the doctor apparently said he hadn’t seen a head shaped like mine – like a rugby ball – in all his time as an obstetrician.

My mom had fallen pregnant quickly after she married my father. Her brother had died a few years before in a bicycle accident and it had affected the family profoundly, so I think her pregnancy was a focal point for her. She was 20 years old when she married my father and I was born later that year.

I was a good boy growing up. I was very quick off the mark and always very focused. I was mad about cars and knew my Chevy from my Valiant. I knew what I wanted, even before I could really talk. My mom tells me that they used to wheel me in my little pram to the café to get bread in the morning and I used to demand ‘Kaplan bled’ (Kaplan’s bread).

I wasn’t an only child for long. My middle brother, Gary, arrived when I was 20 months old, and my younger brother, David, arrived 22 months after that.

My parents named me Jonathan Isaac, which means ‘G-d has given laughter’. My mom wanted to call me David because that was her late brother’s name, but it was too painful for her to say it, so she called me Jonathan, who was David’s best friend in the Bible. My brother is Gary Zave: I think he was named after Gary Player the golfer; his middle name means ‘wolf’, which was my great-grandpa’s name. Gary is not a particularly Jewish name, which is unusual in my family because we all go for Old Testament names. Finally, by the time they got to their third kid, I think my mom was ready to call it David, so my little brother is David Samuel.

Naming is a helluva important thing. The Jewish belief is that a parent receives the gift of prophecy in that moment when they name a child. I was named for the biblical David’s best friend, and my brothers really are my best friends. And boys’ names – well, in my family, there are a lot of boys. My parents had three boys, my brother Gary has four boys, David has a boy and I have a boy. That’s nine in a row. You’d think that all the good boys’ names were taken! When I named Kaleb, I thought it was a beautiful name in isolation, but the broader meaning is so special. In Hebrew, kelev is a dog and, of course, I’ve always had a strong attachment to dogs. It also comes from the words kol lev, meaning ‘all heart’, which really describes the essence of the animal. But you can’t call a son ‘Dog’!

I was looking for an unusual name that I liked the sound of. In the Bible, Caleb was one of the twelve spies sent by Moses into Canaan to assess the land. When they returned, ten spies said, ‘Those tribes will kill us, they’re too strong for us, they don’t want other people living around there; we must stay in the desert.’ Only two spies – Caleb and Joshua – were positive, and said that the people should go into the unknown and make a new life for themselves. There is a certain bravery attached to being a spy, and to going against the majority view. If you rely completely on the majority who say no – ten versus two – then you stay in the desert. But if you go the way of the minority, then you find hope, trust and positive energy. Caleb and Joshua recognised the issues but, more than that, they recognised the potential. The future relies on people like Caleb.

A discussion about growing up in Durban very quickly splits into seemingly unrelated tangents. As he talks, JK’s eye contact goes from a stare so piercing it’s painful, to a gaze so distracted it’s insulting. From intense zeroing in to dismissive zoning out, it’s like a multifocal camera lens struggling to calibrate. It won’t take me long to learn that his tangents are tributaries of a deep and complex river, its smooth surface belying the churning waters below. His attention span is deceptive: he has penetrating focus and marathonian endurance, yet he cannot sit still or tread water. I can see why people might misperceive JK as arrogant or detached. His life has been a study in objectivity, spent honing the skill of playing the whole field while at the same time understanding, with precision and depth, the detailed composition taking place in front of his eyes. While he might move effortlessly between these states, others take time to catch up, and the gap between is fertile breeding ground for misconception. So he may come across as dismissive, or intense, or self-concerned. But look closely and you’ll see that he looks even closer. While at times he might meander, he is never far from the heart of a matter, especially if it really counts. And the thing that matters most yet has dogged him the longest? The thing of constancy towards which he has always worked yet on which he has never been able to truly depend? It’s the thing that often eludes the child of divorce. It’s the thing that surely eludes an international sports professional living on the road or in the air. It’s that most basic of needs on Maslow’s hierarchy. Home.

I was just about six years old when my parents split. My dad left with his golf clubs and his music system, and my mom stayed in the house for a while until it was sold and she moved in with her parents.

I didn’t even know they were unhappy. I remember trying to get them back together, which I think is a normal reaction for a kid, until it was explained to me that when two people don’t love each other, sometimes they split up and may find another whom they do love.

They had to sell the house, so we moved in with my grandparents, Morris and Sonya, in Lonsdale Drive, but two years later they sold their house and we all moved together to Riley Road. I was happy there. I played Cops and Robbers with my brothers, I did colouring books, like everybody else. I lived there from eight to ten years old.

My grandpa died of leukaemia over that time and, a while later, my mom met and married Les, who had fallen head over heels in love with her. My dad went to live in a flat in Glenwood. I saw him often, and most Friday nights. His family has a German-Jewish background, very traditional. Friday night, Shabbat, was an important thing and I learned the value of that from them.

My dad’s dad, my grandfather Harry, was a very gentle man and I liked him a lot. My dad’s mother, my grandmother Ida, was the strong matriarch of the family but she could also be a tough cookie. She was strict with kids and everything had its place, which was the norm for her day and age. With my granny Sonya, my mom’s mom, I had a very different relationship. She paid attention to us, she was interested in us, and she wanted us to celebrate life. I remember once, my brother Gary was going through a tough time emotionally, mainly with our stepfather. One day he told my gran, ‘I’d rather be dead,’ and my gran gave him a side-winder. It’s the only time I saw her lose her temper physically. Remember she lost her son – my mother’s brother – and she said to Gary, ‘Don’t you ever talk like that to me, you don’t know what it’s like to lose a child!’ That incident really stuck with all of us.

I was ten years old, playing Cowboys and Indians with my brothers (and it’s important you know that because I need you to understand that I’m just a little boy, I’m only ten), and my mom called me in. My dad was there too. They told me that my mom was moving up to Jo’burg, and that I had a decision to make. ‘Your brothers are too young to decide, but we feel that you’re old enough to make a decision about where you want to stay.’ Durban with my dad, or Jo’burg with my mom and brothers.

I decided to stay with my dad because he’d be lonely; my mom would have my brothers, my dad would have me. I obviously didn’t truly conceptualise the impact of being split up from my mother and brothers. At the time, it was just my way of being fair.

So my mom, now married to this guy Les, left for Jo’burg. I moved into my dad’s flat and continued at Carmel College, where I had friends and was happy. My dad was a pharmacist with two pharmacies in Durban at the time.

I had my own room in the flat but sometimes I slept in the same bed as my dad. He didn’t mind if he didn’t have anyone else there. And it was nice for me not to have to be in my room on my own. We used to have TV dinners and watch Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels and Hawaii Five-0. I would have preferred him to be more involved and watch more of my sport but his time was limited.

I played every sport even though I wasn’t particularly athletic. But at Carmel, there were only a few boys in the year so everyone had to play everything. I played tennis for school and at the Circle Club, and my dad used to like supporting that because he liked tennis. But I was the filler. So number one and two were very good, number three was competent and I was the fourth. I played soccer, I did karate. I swam. And I played rugby.

Although I had friends and I did sport, I was on my own a lot too because I didn’t have my siblings with me. In school holidays, either I’d go to Johannesburg or they’d come to Durban, so it wasn’t like I didn’t see them. But when I came home from school every day, I was on my own. Sometimes I went to friends’ houses and my dad would fetch me from there after work. Mostly I went home. My dad was never at home. He was working, making a living for himself and the family, and I grew up on my own, or at least as a single child.

When you spend a lot of time on your own growing up, I think you become emotionally self-sufficient. I was always a good boy, trying to please. I wasn’t rebellious or anti-establishment. I honestly think I was as close to a model child as you can get, although I was always very competitive. The competitive streak can be a very positive thing but it can also be a big drawback because not everything is a competition. Winning is important but not at the expense of personal growth.

My dad was focused on me achieving success and, when I did, there was this sheer, beaming pride. I loved seeing him like that. Perhaps as a result of this, or perhaps it was my nature anyway, I developed a killer instinct to want to be the best.

Having siblings around definitely impacts your competitiveness. It’s part of the nature/nurture thing. If an intrinsically competitive nature is correctly nurtured, then it develops in the right direction, so you’re competitive at the right times. I remember I wasn’t the best loser. I’m an emotional person and in the moment of losing, it was difficult to let go. A gracious loser concentrates on the other in that moment of losing, not on the self. Growing up, I wasn’t taught this. My response to losing was a selfish one. Looking back, I wish I could have been made aware of my responses and been able to be a little more gracious with losing: forget about the self, concentrate on the other person and let them have their moment. Support them in their moment of winning because you’ve done your best in the playing.

When I was growing up, my mom was all about love, opportunity, picking up the pieces when it didn’t work out, keeping that sibling connection alive and growing it, which was especially important because we were split up. My dad, while also loving, was focused on hard work, being a good Jew and pushing me to do well. He valued academic achievement and never thought of sport as a vehicle for excellence. While I was one of the smarter ones, I definitely wasn’t the dux. But I took his pressure seriously and I worked hard. I wasn’t interested in the silver medal, I wanted the gold.

After my mom left, my dad and I had almost two years ‘alone’ together. But at twelve years old things changed dramatically for us. I was about to grow up.

Chapter 2

The bull

I arrive at JK’s place to find all eyes on Lola. The bulldog. She has hurt her paw and the analysis of her medical status consumes Jonathan. The other dogs look to me for attention while their dad takes care of their friend. When all canines have been cleared for duty, they take up position in a comical diagonal down the stairs, shoving their too-large heads under the too-small gap beneath the iron railing, waiting for treats.

The baby is nowhere to be seen or heard again, save for the spluttering of the baby monitor in the pocket of Zonke’s apron every time she turns a corner. I’ve seen Kaleb’s picture on Facebook a couple of times, his idyllic image of newborn repose giving a firm finger to whoever spent the preceding night rocking and shushing him like a demented washing machine. Last night it wasn’t Jonathan, that’s for sure. He is as bright-eyed as ever this morning, having bade a grateful farewell to Estelle, the night nurse. But we’ll get to her. For now, it’s about the dogs.

Jonathan

What is my thing with dogs?

First of all, I really don’t like coming back to an empty house that has no noise. So I put on TV or music and the noise is nice but it’s subliminal. But a dog: that’s a life, a beating heart, something worth nurturing. Without kids, the dogs were my default for a long time.

They say that having a puppy is a crash-course in having a baby. There’s some truth in that. Some of the parenting and life lessons I’m learning come through my dogs. Take Patat, for example. She was the particularly naughty one. I used to smack her, sometimes quite hard. She thought it was a game and she’d be like, Okay, I’m sorry I did it, but can we carry on playing now? From that I learned that things are going to happen with my child and I’ve got to control my emotional state. A dog, like a child, isn’t naughty for no reason. It’s telling you something. For Patat it was: I need to get out, I need to sniff around, I need exercise, I need to wee on something. I bought a million doggie toys, but it made no difference. There’s a message you aren’t hearing if their only option is to be naughty. Patat was bored. She needed my attention. More importantly, she needed my time. The lesson of Patat is that you’ve got to put in the hours, because there are no gifts that can take the place of time. It’s the only way to create a bond. And as for the smacking. I believe there is a place for stronger disciplinary measures but not if they’re uncontrolled.

One of my earliest memories is of getting a smack.

I was about four and I ran down the driveway of our house and my brother Gary followed me. There was a road at the bottom, not a particularly busy road, but it was a dangerous thing to do none the less. Even at that age I knew I was wrong but I was curious to see what was at the bottom. The nanny caught us at the bottom of the driveway. When my dad came back from work, he took a belt and smacked us both. In actual fact, it was my fault. Gary was only following me, but my dad wanted to discourage us both. Gary started crying before he even touched him.

Although I remember it as a horrible incident, I think I deserved it. There comes a time when words are not enough.

I remember feeling disappointed in myself. I knew I was wrong. I probably started crying afterwards, when my dad sent us to our room. And he would have come to our room later, as did my mom, to help smooth things over.

I think that there has to be a balance. I don’t believe parents should lose control, and so a smack shouldn’t be done emotionally. But I do believe that you can’t just talk. Sometimes there is a climactic moment to get a message across and you can’t miss it by waffling with words. Too much talking is counter-productive.

In rugby we do it all the time. Do we just give penalty, penalty, penalty, penalty? No, we don’t. There’s a yellow card and a red card. The public may complain that it creates a mismatch when a player is carded. Well, the referee doesn’t have another place to go; he has to have cards because otherwise teams change the shape of the game to suit themselves. The punitive sanction may ruin the game as a spectacle but it’s absolutely necessary to preserve the shape of the game. Without the sanction, the game changes – and not for the better. Players take more chances and become dismissive of authority and the game. And while the spectators might not like it, the ref can’t be more interested in the audience than in the integrity of the game they’re there to watch.

I think that when it comes to discipline, you need to have appropriate tools to escalate a punishment. It’s something I find really hard with my baby, now only a couple months old … Not that he needs punishment, but how do I escalate a solution?

I do raise my voice at him. Like this morning: he was crying and I didn’t know what was wrong with him. My first step was to change his nappy. Still crying. I played with him and massaged his feet. Still not happy. I fed him the 60ml that he was due. Still crying. So I’d done the nappy, the food, the winding – all my tricks, and still I couldn’t work it out. I tried changing his position, putting him down, picking him up, toys … Nothing was working. Nothing. Then I held him to try and appease him but he screamed even more. It felt like a battle of wills. What could I do? I’m getting anxious and my blood starts to boil because I’m frustrated with him and I’m angry with myself because I don’t know how to parent properly. It’s all escalating with no resolution. So I raise my voice, to a point where he is more focused on my voice than on his own discomfort.

What I need to realise is that I must be the referee. So everything’s escalating on the field and I’m the calming influence. Rugby is a contact sport that can sometimes become overly physical. As a ref, I never get involved in the punch and the fight. I’m not looking to see who’s winning, I’m not supporting anybody – I’m being clinical and doing my job and part of my job is to give the frustration an appropriate outlet. Then we can get on with the game. I have to have the emotional IQ to deal with each situation as it requires. Some players might do well with verbal feedback, or need me to look at them, explain for a bit longer, give them a little more time in words, to say, This is why I’m doing this and this is what I don’t want you to do going forward and then we’re going to have a lekker game. And others just need me to say, Yellow card, punching an opponent, off you go, and they’re like, Okay, that’s fine, ref, let’s get on with it.

With Kaleb I need him to feed off my calmness. That’s what I’m learning. Even when the thing is escalating and I can see it escalating and I’m getting anxious because I know what’s coming and I don’t know how to fix it. I honestly believe that no matter how many baby books you read (and I didn’t read any), nothing can prepare you for that anxiety when your child starts screaming inconsolably.

I don’t want to be the parent who the child gets the better of. I don’t want to be the parent who says, I’ve asked you to stop, and he carries on. I want to be there for the child, I want to try and understand what he’s feeling, thinking, and offer him support, even if it’s just my presence. But I don’t want to be the parent who begs the child. I want to be the one who considers, then makes the decision that he’s gone past a line in the sand and then deals with it appropriately. Of course, that is the big question because ‘appropriate’ is a big ambit – what is appropriate? And when are you making the decision about the sanction? Because that’s also very important. In rugby, as in life, the right decision is not right if it comes at the wrong time. If it’s too early, they almost resent you for not allowing them to be naughty first. And if it’s too late, you allow them to be naughty a gazillion times and they won’t stop because you didn’t take the sanction at the appropriate juncture.

You’ve got to make the right decision at the right time with the right tone of whistle. Kaleb is a little baby now; he doesn’t know how to test me yet. But to discourage negative behaviour, I use my tone of voice as the ‘punishment’. Sometimes I just have to blow the whistle on the crying. Or give us a time-out. Some people might consider this a punishment, but I have had to leave him alone to cry for a few seconds because I don’t know how to fix the problem and I can feel the tension rising. Some say never leave a baby alone because that’s abandonment, so always hold it, even if it’s screaming. I’m trying something else, which says that your appearance after a session of crying will allow him to refocus on your presence, whereas if you’re constantly there, and you’re not actually fixing anything, he can’t refocus. A negative presence is not a nurturing one. So sometimes, once I’ve eliminated all the basic causes of Kaleb’s upset, the best thing I can do – for him and for me – is to give us a brief time apart.

Anyway, this morning was an example of that thinking. It wasn’t a miracle cure, though. I raised my voice and it gave him a few minutes of quiet but the acid must have been hurting him because eventually the crying won. To be honest with you, today was one of those days when I actually didn’t do well. I just didn’t understand how to fix him – one of those days when I felt totally inadequate.

Without warning, yet almost as if on cue, JK gets up and leaves the table.

He goes to the kitchen, decants some dog food, switches on the kettle, repeatedly sweeps his thumb upwards on his phone’s screen in the habit of seasoned Instagrammers, casts a passing glance at the bottles of baby formula ready for the day’s feeds, heaps two bowls with yogurt and muesli, and returns to the table as if he had never left.

I’m getting used to this. It’s another one of his hyperactive-meets-hyperfocus habits, where he relieves a state of concentrated attention with