The eldest daughter of Steve Jobs, Lisa Brennan-Jobs has described her troubled relationship with the Apple founder, her father, in the forthcoming memoir, Small Fry.
An excerpt of the memoir was published in Vanity Fair magazine and it reveals details about the father-daughter relationship.
The mother of Lisa, Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs were high school sweethearts and had an on-and-off relationship back in the 70s. Their daughter was born in 1978 when they were both 23.
Lisa, today 40-years-old, writes that as a child, she would often tell her friends it was a secret that the tech giant was her dad.
She also writes about how she learned to love her father who was claiming for years that she wasn’t his child.
Lisa also discusses about growing in the shadow of her father. She now resides in Brooklyn, with her husband Bill and their 4-month-old son Thomas.
She’s NOT My Child, Said Steve Jobs
Three days after Lisa was born, Jobs was frequently saying she’s not his child, writes Lisa in her memoir.
He had also publicly denied being her father for two years after she was born and even claimed he was sterile in a deposition.
After the DNA test proved he was her biological father, the court ruled the Apple founder to cover the child-support and welfare payments or a total of $500 per month.
Only several days after this ruling, Apple became a public company and his net worth was more than $200, claims his daughter.
You Won’t Be Getting Anything
His eldest daughter also wrote that as a child, she would often hear rumors how her dad would buy a new Porsche each time he scratched it.
And, when she asked him if she could have one, her father snapped at her and said ‘you’re not getting anything’, ‘you understand?’
Apple’s Lisa, Named after His Daughter or Not?
His daughter also writes how she grew up believing that the Lisa computer of Apple was named after her and it was something ‘woven into her sense of self’.
However, in high school, when she asked Jobs about the unsuccessful desktop computer project and the connection with her name, her father apparently dismissed her saying ‘nope, sorry, kid’.
But, several years after, when she was invited to a family vacation with Jobs, she heard a different story.
They met with the front man of U2, Bono, for a lunch and Lisa says the musician asked Steve if the computer was really named after his daughter.
Jobs was hesitant, recalls Lisa, and looked down at his plate for some time before he said to Bono, ‘yeah, it was’.
The Year before Jobs’s Death
In the year before his death, Lisa writes she would come to visit every other month.
During one visit, she used a facial mist from her father’s bathroom before she said goodbye.
When they hugged, Jobs told her that she smelled like a toilet.
Lisa explains she spent the best part of her 30s writing these memoirs that are not intended to be self-pitying and soft, but to portray a childhood in which her father wasn’t the man who changed the world, but a man who tried and failed in ordinary ways.
Brennan-Jobs graduated from Harvard and did her postgraduate at King’s College in London prior to coming back into the US to study creative writing.
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