It was such a little thing, really. All I did was get a good grade in my history class. But everything in my house was celebrated. So I knew that, small as my victory was, my father would make a big deal out of it. Armed with my paper about the Stamp Tax, with its bright red “A” on top, I anxiously waited for my father to come home. His evening schedule was relatively predictable. He often worked twelve hour days, but he rarely failed to return home promptly at six thirty each evening to share dinner with my mother and me, returning to work again only after he had helped me with my homework. He would enter our second floor apartment after bounding up the single flight of stairs, and announce his entry with the light cough which was a left over from his many years as a smoker. He would fling open the front door, rarely locked at that time, and call out, like Ward Cleaver, “I’m ho- ome.” My mother, who prized the order and cleanliness of her domain, particularly her new beige carpet, would respond, “Shoes.” My dad would take off his shoes and line them up by the door, Japanese style. Then, he would proceed to remove other pieces of his clothing, calling out, in crisp military fashion, “Socks.” “Pants.” “Shirt.” And off they would come, to be neatly hung up by my mother and replaced by the boxer shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt.

When something good had happened at school during the day, no matter how tiny the event, I would proudly announce it at the conclusion of this homecoming dance. The choreography that followed was equally predictable. “Let’s celebrate,” my dad would exclaim. And my mother would continue the routine by making hors d’ouvres out of Ritz crackers topped with bits of cheese and pickles, pouring cocktails of juice and seltzer, sprayed from an old-fashioned spritzer glass bottle and served in martini glasses with two or three large stuffed green olives in each.

The fact that there were only three of us didn’t diminish the celebration, even for holiday dinners. On those special events, for which most other families had guests consisting of immediate and extended family, the trio of us dressed in our fancy clothes, took out the good dishes, and shared the events in our own good company. Sometimes, we invited friends, whose company came to feel like family, but I do not recall being disheartened when we were only a threesome.

It was quite incredible, though, that my father, Benjamin (Ben) Topas, and my mother, Rose Topas, could have been so joyous, so often.

When I was born, my father was just eight years removed from the September day in 1939 when he responded to the German bombing of Warsaw by joining a stream of citizens in marching about 200 miles to the north, to the Russian territories, taking with him only what he could carry on his back.

He was just seven years removed from the Warsaw Ghetto, to which he returned when the Russians said the Jews were no longer welcome. Seven years From the typhoid and the bombing afflicting his hometown.

He was just six years removed from the hole in the wall where he crouched whenever anyone entered the attic apartment where my mother lived, ostensibly as a single Christian woman. From the place where he, a small dark-haired, dark-eyed, large beaked Jew, sat silently for over a year lest a neighbor hear him speak or walk or even sneeze.

He was just four years removed from the sewer in which he lived for eighteen months. From the hot, dank bunker he and thirty-one other Jews built under the abandoned city of Warsaw. From the terrible pangs of constant hunger to the terror of being caught during his nightly food raids through the nearly-deserted city.

Two years from the ship that carried him and my mother to this country, with no money, almost no surviving family, and minimal knowledge of the English language.

Even after he and my mother became more settled in the United States, life was difficult. The hours were long and the money was slow. Trained as a scientist, he was unable to get work in his field until he mastered the language and the culture, and an immigrant doing manual labor is not only short on money but respect, too. Even when better opportunities began to come his way, he was in a desperate race to succeed in the remaining few years he felt he could be productive. So he began his days early and ended them late.

But celebrate he did. Every day in a multitude of ways.

Starting in the morning, six days a week, every week, with no vacations for years, he rose at 6:00 a.m., showered quickly and shaved as the morning light came up. Lathered his face with a short-handled bristle brush and removed the soap and whiskers with efficient strokes of his hand-held Gillette. He emerged from his tiny bathroom ruddy-faced from his ministrations, brown eyes clear and bright, straight black hair slick with water, brushed back, leaving two deep “V’s” in the front. Before you saw him, though, you heard his signature morning call- a strong, tuneful whistling rendition of songs from this week’s “Your Hit Parade.” If he met you in the hall and he liked you a lot (and he liked me a lot), he’d give another signature mark- a pinch of the cheek, a quick movement, a stinging tweak, and an affectionate glance.

On Sundays, he slept in. As a little child, I lay quietly in my bed on those mornings, waiting to hear the sounds that meant he was awake. A few seconds later, he would shout “Playtime,” and I would bound out of my room and fly into the twin beds, pushed together, that he and my mother shared. We would talk and joke and he would tickle me and she would kiss me up.

The days ended, too, with a pause for loving. I swear, I was nearly married before he stopped singing “Braham’s Lullaby” to me at night, standing near my bed as I closed my eyes on the day.

He didn’t look as joyful as he was. By nature, his face was stern-looking in repose, and he rarely made a sound when he laughed, another remnant of his years of hiding. His demeanor sometimes scared my friends, but to me, he was a jolly soul who would shake his large pot belly up and down when he laughed, turning red in the face and teary in the eyes. Once, he silently laughed so hard at a Sid Caesar show that he fainted dead away on the floor. He loved good comedians, and he loved making jokes himself. He would wiggle his ears when he was telling you something serious, but he wouldn’t acknowledge he was doing it and you weren’t quite sure it had happened. He would lift one eyebrow at a time and punctuate his sentences with his contortions. My best friend still vividly remembers my somewhat formal father (he wore suits to the beach) leaping into the living room in a grand j’ete, spindly arms outstretched and slight legs in the air, clad only in boxer shorts and an Italian style sleeveless t-shirt which stretched over his surprisingly large and round mid-section. Wordless, he bowed and departed.

Although our home was filled with much laughter, maintaining joy took an exercise of will. Once, when my father was telling me a story about a favorite niece of his, whom he had obviously loved dearly but who was gassed by the Nazis when she was eleven, I asked him how he could be so dispassionate about the tale of her death. On one of the very few occasions when I saw him cry, his voice cracked as he said, “If I let myself feel what happened, I would go crazy. I just stand above the stories and tell them like its just history.” He then put his head down on the table where he sat and sobbed. It was then that I understood the resilience and courage it took them to live lives that included humor, celebration and joy. And that this willingness and ability to do that was no small victory.