I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow by Jonathan Goldstein

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.”
    â€œSo you just stood there, waiting?”
    â€œNot 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. Iconclude 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.
    â€œHere 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.
    â€œEver 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