A couple’s journey into parenthood

Cape Town writer Lisa Lazarus doesn’t mince her words when explain­ing why she wrote The Book of Jacob—her joint mem­oir of a couple’s jour­ney into parenthood.

”I wrote it because I was cross, in truth I was furious—the book really burst out of me,” she said at the recent launch of the book, which was co-written with her hus­band, UCT phi­los­o­phy teacher Greg Fried. ”It was this feel­ing that sparked the book, like I’d been conned in some way.”

Every­one who has been through the joy and trauma of hav­ing a child will relate to Lisa’s sen­ti­ment, know­ing that, with the exhil­a­ra­tion of the beloved pre­cious bun­dle comes a great deal of hard work, deep feel­ings of fail­ure and loss—and many sleep­less nights.

Her hus­band has this to say: ”The Book of Jacob doesn’t look like the other books in the par­ent­ing sec­tion. The other books are in bright colours, red, orange, green, with cute infants and serene or laugh­ing par­ents, books plead­ing to be adored. Our vol­ume, with its haunt­ing, sil­very gleam, like a Vic­to­rian photo of a séance, mixes strangely with its com­pan­ions. When we first saw its eerie grey-blue among the gaudy shelves of Exclu­sive Books, we realised that we’d bro­ken into a new genre: the Gothic par­ent­ing memoir.”

He goes on: ”In fact, though, its appear­ance is entirely appro­pri­ate to the mate­r­ial. If you take plea­sure in sud­den screams in the night, the feel­ing that some­thing is about to go ter­ri­bly wrong, long and close con­fine­ment within a small space, unex­pected denun­ci­a­tions from blood rel­a­tives, long brood­ing fol­lowed by spasms of rage, bursts of hys­ter­i­cal laugh­ter, then our par­ent­ing mem­oir is for you.”

It is this kind of humour that per­vades The Book of Jacob—a book which had me giggling—and occa­sion­ally shed­ding a tear—from the pref­ace all the way through. With Greg’s often hilar­i­ous philo­soph­i­cal musings—reminiscent of the philo­soph­i­cal author Alain de Bot­ton, I would sug­gest it has a place in the Humour sec­tion too.

The book tells the story of a young and very hap­pily mar­ried cou­ple who decide to have a baby.

”We had decided that we didn’t NOT want to have a baby,” declares Lisa. ”This is not a good rea­son, nor a clever one, to have a child.” But, she adds, that was, in fact, the only rea­son she had.

Her poor track record with kids didn’t help. She had been fired, in her twen­ties, from a job look­ing after chil­dren because, as the father bluntly put it: ”The kids don’t like you.”

Early on in the book, we are told how Lisa sum­mons her hus­band to the bed­room where they have ‘baby sex’.

Against their expec­ta­tions, she falls preg­nant imme­di­ately and the couple—accustomed to a won­der­ful life together, are forced to hit the ground run­ning. Despite the ante­na­tal classes and the first aid courses for infants, they realise noth­ing has pre­pared them for a baby.

In hon­est, often hilar­i­ously funny or poignantly sad style, this cou­ple pro­vide ‘his’ and ‘her’ ver­sions of their daily toils in rais­ing a baby dur­ing that tumul­tuous first year.

Describ­ing the first year of par­ent­hood, Lisa says: ”It felt like a rick­ety row boat, lost at sea, head­ing into the dis­tance … know­ing only what I’ve left behind, and with a ter­ri­ble long­ing for what that was.”

She describes the real anx­i­ety of not being able to breast-feed prop­erly, and the trauma of hav­ing a baby that won’t fall asleep or stop crying.

Greg describes, at one point, the relief of leav­ing their ‘grimy pad’ to hand baby Jacob over to his par­ents for his first sleep over.

He writes: ”At home, Lisa and I bum­ble about with Jacob, two vil­lage oafs try­ing to keep a hot potato in the air. We slump into the couches of my par­ents’ lounge. At last some­one is going to take care of Jacob.”

The arrival of Jacob stripped Greg of views he pre­vi­ously cher­ished about him­self:     ” … a calm per­son, able to be cool and rea­son­able under stress. Over months it came to me, as a slow wave of rev­e­la­tion, that under stress I am a lunatic, totally unrea­son­able and quick to attack every­one nearby and then try to escape. I think, at some level I don’t usu­ally think about, it’s been a blow to my sense of manliness.”

At one point, dur­ing one of their few con­ver­sa­tions since child­birth, Greg asks anx­iously about the baby: ”Do you think he’s advanced?”, to which Lisa replies: ”Not really.”

When Lisa’s friend Shani, the per­fect mother, vis­its, she relates how once she had a child, her whole life made sense. ”It seems to be the point, doesn’t it,” she says, while breast-feeding contentedly.

At that stage, Lisa con­tem­plates tranquillisers.

When the cou­ple takes a short break in Paris, leav­ing Jacob with Greg’s par­ents, they find them­selves in a restau­rant enjoy­ing hot choco­late and French onion soup. But they are talk­ing about Jacob’s education.

Despite some of the hair-raising moments described in the book, Greg and Lisa are doing just fine. There’s even talk of a pos­si­ble sec­ond child.

As Lisa puts it: ”Despite the very long, and very treach­er­ous, jour­ney in our boat we, the three of us—Greg, Jacob and I—eventually bumped up against land. We man­aged to pull our boat up to shore, get off and take a look at this new coun­try where we found ourselves.

”It’s a vast place—this coun­try, which is not really a coun­try, but rather a new state of being, parenthood—and from the small part I’ve seen (because I’m still really explor­ing the edges of this for­eign world) it’s a rich place—mountainous, with great peaks and troughs. There are many dan­gers but also many joys.”

The Book of Jacob is not only infor­ma­tive for prospec­tive par­ents, it’s also enter­tain­ing the whole way through. Every book club should have a copy.

The Book of Jacob—A jour­ney into par­ent­hood by Lisa Lazarus and Greg Fried.

Pub­lish­ers Oshun Books.