Free I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow by Jonathan Goldstein Page B

lose,” the card reads.
    I place the card in my wallet, and then tuck the walletinto my back pocket. I walk over to the wall mirror and spin around to examine myself.
    â€œIn good time,” I think, “you will have the rump of a Greek god.”

Baby Steps
    (29 weeks)
    MONDAY.
    My sister was in her late thirties when she announced her pregnancy.
    â€œIt’s a miracle,” my mother said. Dina Goldstein is a woman who had me in her teens, and she believes in early starts. Rising at 5:00 a.m. to dust ceiling fans and fireplace logs, she is sprung from the mould of shtetl women past who cleaned, loved, and worried with great ferocity. Which is to say, she’d been waiting to be a grandmother since her twenties. And which is also to say, with my sister’s good news, the pressure was off me.
    Today is the blessed day of the baby’s arrival, and we all meet up at the hospital. I’ve never been in a room where so many members of my family are so happy all at once. Usually, maybe one or two are happy at any given time while the rest hold down the fort, remaining dyspeptic,dysphoric, or boldly struggling to maintain a nice, even level of dispiritedness.
    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.
    â€œMay 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.
    â€œMy 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!”
    â€œSadly,” says Josh, leaning into me, “‘Grampy 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.
    â€œI can use a towel holder anyway,” he says.
    â€œA 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.
    â€œWhat took you so long?” I ask.
    â€œI was waiting for someone to come in and let me out,” he says. “I