I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow (9 page)
Read I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow Online
Authors: Jonathan Goldstein
Tolstoy once wrote that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way and that happy families are all alike.This is not so, as evidenced by my father, who is smilingly biting into a home-brought chicken sandwich while seated atop an upturned wastepaper basket, and my mother, who is rubbing disinfectant gel onto her lips, preparing to kiss the newborn.
We all stand around for hours, happily staring at the baby and clutching our chests. How strange to feel yourself falling in love with someone you've only just met. And how endlessly fascinating it is to watch someone getting used to being alive. Though perhaps even more fascinating is watching someone get used to being a part of our family.
The male-pattern balding that starts at twelve.The foot fungus that rises up to the thighs and the hemorrhoids that descend to the ankles. Not to mention the messy eating. Legend has it that one time my father kept an egg noodle hanging from his lower lip for the duration of the Canada Day weekend. If he could only have lasted a few more days he might have ended up on the Johnny Carson show, seated on the couch alongside the guy who hiccupped for forty years.
But to look at my nephew, so little and brand new, and to even think these things feels wrong somehow. So I shoo them away and try to think only positive thoughts.
“May he enjoy nothing but happiness,” I intone. Not wanting to draw attention, I intone to myself. “Days without embarrassment. Days without pain.” Or, at least seven days without pain, at which time he will have the flesh at the end of his penis shorn off. After which, Dixie cups of schnapps and honey cake will be served.
THURSDAY.
Josh and I go for an after-work drink at our neighbourhood bar. Josh thinks we're getting too old for the place, that we should find a good divorcée bar to hang out at.We listen in on what the young people are talking about at the table beside us.
“My Grampy Joe,” the girl says, “he bakes a potato, scoops out the insides, mixes it with cheese and then puts it back into the potato skin!”
“Sadly,” says Josh, leaning into me, “âGrampy Joe' is probably a year younger than you.”
FRIDAY.
At a loss for where to have dinner together, my father, newly minted “Grampy Goldstein,” suggests we drive out to Ikea to dine on Swedish meatballs.
“I can use a towel holder anyway,” he says.
“A towel holder?” I ask. “That's what the good Lord created doorknobs for.”
At Ikea, before beginning to shop, my father stops in at the washroom. I wait for him for almost ten minutes.
“What took you so long?” I ask.
“I was waiting for someone to come in and let me out,” he says. “I don't like to touch the doorknob once I've washed my hands. And now that I'm a grandfather, I have to be extra careful.”
“So you just stood there, waiting?”
“Not just waiting. I worked on the Word Jumble I keep in my pocket.”
As my father shops, I study the expressions on men's faces as they're led by their girlfriends and wives through Ikea. They are expressions that fall somewhere between sorrow and despair. But there's something stoic there, too, as if there's an internalized understanding that the pain of doing something you don't want to do is the essence of love. Like waiting in a bathroom doing word puzzles to protect your grandson. Or shopping for towel holders with your father.
A Covenant
(28 weeks)
MONDAY.
It's the day of my nephew's bris. It's only 5:30 a.m., but I'm very anxious about the whole thing and can't sleep. After the last bris I attended, it was days before I could pry my hands out of my front pockets. I decide to just get out of bed and make my way over to the synagogue.
I'm the first guest to arrive and so I hang out with the mohel. As he prepares his tools we make small talk, and at a certain point he tells me why he got into “moheling,” but before he can get very far, and with my heart racing because I know it might be the only time I'll ever get the chance to use this line on an actual mohel, I blurt out, “For the tips?”
The mohel doesn't laugh, which doesn't make sense to me.The context is perfect and my timing, impeccable. I
conclude that to be a good mohel, you must always be on guard against the peril of shaking with laughter.
When things begin, I sit as far away from the proceedings as I can. By contrast, all the pre-adolescent girls have taken up the entire front row. They're too young to gain admittance into horror films, so this must be the next best thing. Their faces are a mix of anticipation and delight. One of them looks as though she might start moshing.
Someone should make a coffee table book composed of photos of little girls watching brises. It could be called
Thank God I'm a Girl
.
TUESDAY.
I receive an email invitation to lunch from my neighbour Mike, the Canadiens fan.The subject heading reads “Lunch Baby Lunch.” There is no punctuation, but I find myself reading it as “Lunch: Baby Lunch.” What this brings to mind is a high-end, high-concept restaurant called “Baby Lunch,” a place where the diner would be seated in a high chair, fitted into a bonnet and bib, and then spoon-fed beef tartare by a tuxedoed waiter.
“Here comes the monsieur's choo-choo.”
Mike's office is near mine, so we meet at a new restaurant in the area. The meal is good and so is the service, but with “Café Baby Lunch” still on my mind, I can't help feeling a little disappointed that the wait staff only goes so far as placing the food on the table and not in your mouth.
“Ever wonder what it would feel like to be burped after a meal?” I ask Mike, and judging by his silence, it would seem he has not. Still, the image of two full grown men burping each other in a restaurant parking lot is, to me, a funny one. I think an easy formula for comedy is this: men treated like babies equals comedy. Except in the case of circumcision. And Jerry Lewis.
Two for One
(27 weeks)
MONDAY.
A few days after Valentine's Day, while waiting for the bus, I discover a folded piece of Hilroy notebook paper in a snowbank. I open it and at the top of the paper, written in green pen, is the title “The Reasons Why I Did Not Kiss Her Back.” The reasons are listed in descending order of importance:
5.  Because I was so drunk that looking at her up close was making me dizzy.
4.  Because I wanted her to see that even though she thinks she's all that, she isn't all that.
3.  Because I was really into the movie and didn't want to miss any of it.
2.  Because I'm dating her cousin.
1.  Because her lips were greasy from chicken nuggets.
TUESDAY.
While eating chicken nuggets at my desk, I wonder whether fast food restaurants still give out paper party hats and whether they would give one to an adult. I'm not sure whether eating chicken nuggets at my desk while wearing a cardboard crown would make me feel less sad or more sad, but I am sure I would eat with my office door shut.
THURSDAY.
Marie-Claude and I are out for an early breakfast. Eating grape jelly makes us nostalgic for childhood.
“When I was a kid,” I say, “I thought I'd grow up and eat bacon every day. I couldn't understand why any sane person wouldn't.”
“When I was a kid, I wanted to be successful,” Marie-Claude says, “and I thought successful people ate only caviar and champagne.That's the eighties for you.”
“When I was a kid, I thought the only way a man could let a woman know he liked her was by winking at her. Because I couldn't wink, I thought I'd be alone for the rest of my life. I'd sit in my room for hours, trying so hard to wink I'd almost throw up.”
“Now there's a way to attract a mate,” Marie-Claude says. “Vomiting. It's just like a peacock spreading its tail.”
“I've heard some birds mate for life,” I say. “Like pigeons. I guess it makes me like them more than I would otherwise.”
“Did you know that in Sweden it's illegal to sell a guinea pig that isn't in a pair?”
“It'd be nice if humans came that way, too.”
FRIDAY.
I'm watching a member of the Maasai tribe in Kenya on the news. He is a warrior who operates a program called the Lion Guardians. The intention of the project is to protect cattle while not killing lions, which are now endangered in Africa.
The reporter asks the man why he started the program.
“To impress women,” he answers.
Building the Parthenon? Crossing the Delaware? Forget about it. If it wasn't for impressing women, nothing would ever get done.
I wonder if a male peacock ever woke up one morning and realized just how obvious he was being, the way a man can.To realize too much makes the world less colourful.
SATURDAY.
I'm out doing errands while wearing my Cossack's hat. What with the burning down of the villages and whatnot,
we do not much admire the Cossacks, but we do admire their hats. I find that wearing a Cossack's hat brings a certain regality to the performance of mundane tasksâthings like doing errands, or cleaning up after a poodle.
For years I could never wear mine because it was too tight for my head, but since having shaved my hair, it fits perfectly. Also nice is that it makes me feel like I still have hair. It's kind of like “The Gift of the Magi” without all the cruel irony.
When I get home, I throw the hat onto the couch and put away the groceries, and when I return to the living room, I find Boosh curled up with it, looking, for all intents and purposes, like she's finally found a soulmate.
SOULMATES
Before he ever moved to Gotham City, before he grew into the overweight, obsessive sad sack of his later years, The Penguin was a poet and a dandy who lived in London. He wrote complex villanelles and threw lavish dinner parties at which he only became more charming the more he drank. He wore a monocle, a top hat, and carried an umbrella.
One evening at one of his dinner parties, after hours spent sipping absinthe, The Penguin ran up to the roof of his building, opened up his large black umbrella, and leapt off into the air. As he coasted to the ground, he hollered out lines from Blake, stuff about grabbing life by the fat of its stomach and giving it a twist. He was that crazy. He was that bursting with life.
From that night on he made it his habit to jump off roofs, ever higher, while clutching an umbrella.
After a while he got pretty good at it, too. He saw that by kicking his legs and twisting his back a certain way, he could actually prolong his flight, coasting all over the place, sometimes landing only after several daring minutes aloft.
It came to pass that The Penguin started hearing more and more about a certain nanny named Mary Poppins. She, too, he was told, had been floating around London hanging from an umbrella handle. Everywhere he went The Penguin kept hearing about her, how it was simply insane that they had not yet met each other.
So finally a dinner party was arranged by someone who knew them both, and on the evening of the party, The Penguin walked into the drawing room, saw Mary Poppins on the divan, doffed his top hat, and bowed low, as was his style in those days.
He had planned a few things to say and do when first meeting Mary Poppins. He thought he might lift up his umbrella as though challenging her to a duel. He imagined she would smile and take up her own frilly, perhaps pink umbrella and then, together, they would dance about the room, leaping over furniture, parrying and thrusting, perhaps even winding things up breathing heavily, nose to nose.
Instead what happened was The Penguin became very shy and quiet. As he stood there staring
at her, his top hat felt needlessly clumsy and his monocle too small for his face; plus, the squinting needed to keep it in place was giving him a slight headache. For the first time in his life, The Penguin felt ludicrous.
“I imagine you two must have an infinite amount of things to speak of,” said their host as he sat them together at the dinner table. The Penguin nodded nervously.
After three or four minutes it became clear that The Penguin and Mary Poppins had absolutely nothing to say to each other that did not deal exclusively with umbrella travelâgetting stuck in trees, the shoulder aches, the anxiety about tipping over in the wind.
Everyone at the table just sat there staring at them expectantly, which made the whole thing even more awkward.
Trying to move things along, Mary Poppins asked The Penguin if he liked to sing, to which The Penguin responded, “Only when I'm drunk.” Then she asked if he enjoyed children, to which he replied, “Yes, in a sweet wine sauce.”
The Penguin then asked Mary Poppins how she kept people from looking up her skirt when she flew. She smiled politely, then turned to the man on her left and asked him how he was enjoying the lamb.
The man on her left was wearing an elegant, aristocratic cape. Mary, a bit drunk on the sherry, noted that if he spread his cape out he might be able to glide about like a bat. The man on her left chuckled and suggested that after dinner they head up to the roof and give it a try, which they did.
