How from where we started did we ever reach this Hanukkah?
A tale of friendship, resilience, holidays, family, Katharine Hepburn and the power of an unpronounceable acronym
At left: The author’s parents, David and Muriel Afton, circa 1960. At right, the author (L) with a fellow fan of holiday parties and acronyms. Courtesy of Joan Afton
HFWWSDWERTX?
My dad enjoyed making impossible, long acronyms out of everything, so in high school, my best friend and I came up with HFWWSDWERTX — “How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Christmas?”
We were jaded theater teens, loved old movies and were huge fans of both Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn. It was the morning of a sleepover at my friend’s freezing Victorian house, wearing flannel nightgowns and woolen socks. Outside, there was a Chicago blizzard and we were watching The Lion in Winter on cable. The movie was great — full of all the scenery-chewing, costumes, and quips our teen hearts could have asked for. Finally, with a mix of resignation and amusement and style, Hepburn turns to O’Toole and says, in the context of their failed marriage, insane children, and the very fate of the royal lineages of both England and France — “How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Christmas?”
It becomes part of our secret language from then on. These days, my friend and I still text it to each other, a catchphrase for whenever time seems impossibly past.
HFWWSDWERTX — “How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Christmas?”
My dad was raised by his Orthodox-Jewish-immigrant widowed mother; he stopped any kind of religious observance as soon as he grew up. Mom, on the other hand, was raised by her Socialist-Jewish-immigrant parents, and never observed any kind of religious anything. Or as they put it, “None of that narishkeyt,” using one of the 10 or so Yiddish words that she handed down to me.
When they decided to get married and have kids, though, Jewish heritage became important to them. So out came the silver menorah from Dad’s mother — one of the few things she’d been able to bring from Romania. And out came one of the prayers over the Hanukkah candles that Dad only vaguely remembered from bar mitzvah training.
BAAEMHSVVLH — If you know the prayer, you know the acronym.
Some years, my big brother and I would get eight small presents — like barrettes, or fancy socks, or paperbacks. During some more prosperous years, there would be one big present — like a new dress, or actual hardcovers. We did not truck with any of that Hanukkah-bush or holiday-tree business. None of that narishkeyt for us.
Luckily, my HFWWSDWERTX friend was also something of a heathen, though her parents were of the fallen-away-Catholic brand. They had lived all around the world for her dad’s job before we’d met, so their tree was always decorated with found objects and non-traditional items, each with its own story, carefully put away and brought back out year after year.
A favorite was handmade by Grandma Peg, who was an actual (“DEMOCRATIC, of course!”) state senator. She had cut a circle out of white construction paper and written in green sharpie: “53.04% for Carter,” glued it on a peanut in the shell, speared it all on a hook, and tied it with a green ribbon. This fragile treasure was carefully wrapped in tissue and put away each year, just like the blown-glass ones. The creche was handmade by artisans in Thailand. And every year, new animals from any and all other sources were added: Lego ones, hand-crocheted ones, a big rubber Godzilla.
For someone used to the uptight matchy-matchy ’70s white or silver fake trees with only those round silk or glass balls in all-red or all-green that the neighbors all seemed to have, it was magical.
And they loved to have parties. Christmas at their house was a place to go, with festive things to set up and do, people to hang out with every year. Such a contrast to our 15-minute Hanukkah at home with just the four of us! Their rituals, though secular, were FIERCE: Tinsel must be hung single strands at a time. There had to be a weird fruit salad with whipped cream and bing cherries, the olives on the veggie tray had to be black and colossal. Songbooks were brought out year after year for everyone — some in Farsi on one side and English on the other, some from a department store in Maryland from the ’50s, some printed last week and stapled together at the office. Tradition!
One semester, just before Christmas break at the college I am attending, and hating, I get a call from Mom — “Everything is OK,” she says. Which, translated from Yiddish, means “Everything is decidedly NOT.” There’d been a house fire. No one was hurt, she tells me, but the damage is pretty severe.
I use this excuse to drop out of school and come home to stay with my family at their insurance-provided hotel. Though my father temporarily stops speaking to me because of this decision, we nonetheless go to the Christmas party; it’s where we feel supported and loved. My friend, famously not a hugger, runs to the door with her little sister and hugs each of us, taking our coats. “Happy Hanukkah, how are you, so sorry,” she tells my parents and my brother. And then, she whispers to me: “How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Christmas?”
Five years later, I’m finally at a different college, and about to come home for Christmas break when I get another call from my mother, which starts off with the dreaded “Everything is OK.”
This time, Mom has been diagnosed with an operable and relatively minor breast cancer, and is spending the holidays in the hospital. Dad’s lifelong seasonal affective disorder, and this news, catch up with him, and he is spending Christmas in a locked ward downtown at another hospital. This too turns out to be survivable. My brother and I spend the “holidays” driving between the two. Our extended family and neighbors rally around to help however they can. And somehow, we kids go to the Christmas party, as always. It is a deep secret why exactly dad is in the hospital too. But my friend is pretty sure what’s up without my having to say. This year, by way of greeting, we get hugs and, of course, HFWWSDWERTX.
Ten years on: I’m briefly, oddly, staying alone in my three-bedroom apartment in the big city. Someone breaks in while I am home, steals only my purse, and leaves, just two days after the bus I was on ran over a homeless man. I was unhurt each time. Still, my employer buys me a massage and spa day and tells me to, um, please take the holidays off.
I go, of course, to the Christmas party. It is the last one I would go to before moving to LA.
In the ensuing years, I occasionally fly home for the party and to visit my folks who are starting needing their various kinds of old-age support and help. We try to rally around when and how we can, but it’s no longer every year.
My dad and mom have been gone now for 10 and 16 years, respectively. And then, spring of last year, my best friend’s mom, that daughter of the state senator, world traveler, such a stickler for the tinsel and the colossal olives, also passes away. I fly in to help pack up the condo she’d moved into to help stage it for sale. It’s like the big house I had spent so many Christmases in, but in miniature: immaculate, brimming with artifacts from everywhere — among other tasks, there are three boxes of ornaments, and odd mismatched creche critters to sort through.
I take home the portrait of Obama etched on a small wood panel, and the hand-carved mallard: I put them out on display year-round, because of course, no tree-narishkeyt for me, either. Obama hangs from the key to my filing cabinet, smiling down on the small wooden boxes of cremated remains of my two beloved cats I’ve never quite figured out what to do with. (My friend has grown up to be a Buddhist: In her own adult home they keep a place, of course organized and well-arranged, in memory of those who’ve passed. I remain less organized).
My brother is now the one who’s the global traveler. Usually, we meet up in some global locale, but recently, for the first time in many years, he visits me in LA. I give him the mallard ornament, so he can have a memento too.
Hanukkah, I note, starts on Christmas this year. And that’s going to be that, as far any gatherings or parties for the holiday season for me are concerned this year. My friend and I will call and text, of course, and the acronyms will surely fly back and forth across the miles, and the years.
How, from where we started, did we ever reach this Hanukkah?
Cautiously. With a lot of love, antidepressants, and the support of many oddly-shaped and seemingly ill-assorted critters gathered around, singing their songs under the light of the stars that find us.
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