Her mom, Chrisann Brennan, had Lisa when both she and Jobs were 23 in 1978 — but he publicly denied he was her father until 1980, when the San Mateo district attorney forced him to take a paternity test and provide child support.
The court required Jobs to cover child support of $385 per month, which was then increased to $500 a month — plus back payments — and medical insurance until Brennan-Jobs turned 18. Four days after the case was finalized, Apple went public and Jobs became worth $200 million, his daughter wrote.
She also recalled believing that her father replaced his Porsche every time it had a scratch and asking whether she could have one when he got rid of it.
"You're not getting anything," she said he responded. "You understand? Nothing. You're getting nothing."
She uses the Apple Lisa, the failed precursor to the Macintosh, as a metaphor for her attempts to belong to her father.
"Was it named after me?" she asked her father at one point.
"Nope. Sorry kid," he responded.
Brennan-Jobs' relationship with her father could be turbulent. After some fights, Jobs cut his daughter off financially, forcing her to borrow tuition money from neighbors and her father's Apple associates at times.
even on his deathbed
On one such visit, when her dad was so sick he could barely get out of bed, she sprayed herself with expensive rose facial mist she’d found in his bathroom before going to say good-bye.
“When we hugged, I could feel his vertebrae, his ribs. He smelled musty, like medicine sweat,” she wrote.
Brennan-Jobs, now 40, turned to leave and that’s when her dad called out, “Lis?”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“You smell like a toilet,” she recalls him saying.
By that point Brennan-Jobs writes she’d already given up on “the possibility of a grand reconciliation, the kind in the movies” with her famous father, who died at 56.
The court required Jobs to cover child support of $385 per month, which was then increased to $500 a month — plus back payments — and medical insurance until Brennan-Jobs turned 18. Four days after the case was finalized, Apple went public and Jobs became worth $200 million, his daughter wrote.
She also recalled believing that her father replaced his Porsche every time it had a scratch and asking whether she could have one when he got rid of it.
"You're not getting anything," she said he responded. "You understand? Nothing. You're getting nothing."
She uses the Apple Lisa, the failed precursor to the Macintosh, as a metaphor for her attempts to belong to her father.
"Was it named after me?" she asked her father at one point.
"Nope. Sorry kid," he responded.
Brennan-Jobs' relationship with her father could be turbulent. After some fights, Jobs cut his daughter off financially, forcing her to borrow tuition money from neighbors and her father's Apple associates at times.
even on his deathbed
On one such visit, when her dad was so sick he could barely get out of bed, she sprayed herself with expensive rose facial mist she’d found in his bathroom before going to say good-bye.
“When we hugged, I could feel his vertebrae, his ribs. He smelled musty, like medicine sweat,” she wrote.
Brennan-Jobs, now 40, turned to leave and that’s when her dad called out, “Lis?”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“You smell like a toilet,” she recalls him saying.
By that point Brennan-Jobs writes she’d already given up on “the possibility of a grand reconciliation, the kind in the movies” with her famous father, who died at 56.
not the kid's fault for existing
