And I still haven't written a novel.
Just kidding, internet. I never intended to write a novel. I'm quite happy as a short-order word guy.
I guess this is what adulthood looks like, nowadays? When my grandfather was this age, he had kids. Three. And also a house. And I believe a job programming huge mainframe computers with FORTRAN.
My dad was married at 26—had been for a couple of years. He was working the same job he has now—a good one, as an attorney for New York State. But he didn't have me until he was thirty. And I was the first. Of three.
I asked my grandfather about marriage, once. His first wife (my grandmother) died thirteen years ago, and now he has another, this one common law, but still very much a member of the family and great in all respects.
So I asked him, essentially: "Is it weird that my life is so different from yours or dad's?"
And his answer, essentially, was: "No. The only reason to get married nowadays is for kids. When I was your age, we had to get married just to move out of our parents' houses."
And then he took me upstairs and showed me a photo of my great-grandfather, the original Galician Jew, who lit out from Europe because fighting in World War I was for gentiles (or at least not for him), only to have his whole country disappear in the interregnum. It turned into Ukraine. And Poland. I believe he made his living selling fabric.
I'm not quite sure how this patrilineal succession ended up in Toronto, or why it is that, instead of worrying about war or family, I spent Saturday afternoon picking out t-shirts. Three.
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