Daddy dropped the three of us in front of my grandparents’ apartment building on Bronx Park East, then spun around to find parking. Mom waited at the lobby entrance, and Susie and I skipped around, jumping over cracks and playing tag. The trees in the sidewalk gardens were showing their first green. Soon they would bud in pinks, whites and purples, and their fragrances would float over the streets and sidewalks.
Daddy walked back up the sidewalk, and we slipped into the lobby, which smelled of Passover. Everyone in the building seemed to be having their Seders tonight. I picked out chicken soup, matzoh balls, gefilte fish, chopped liver, beef brisket, asparagus, apples and honey cake. When the elevator arrived, I raced in and pushed the button for the eighth floor. Susie pressed it, too, just to make sure. Mom looked at us to confirm that our dresses were sitting properly and our hair was in place. “Behave yourselves, girls,” she warned us. When the elevator door slid open, we broke out, squealing with delight and pressing the chime on my grandparents’ door.
I heard footsteps inside and saw a momentary shot of light as someone looked through the peephole. The door opened and my grandfather, dressed in a crisp white shirt and a bow-tie, ushered us in. The living room sparkled with light. Two long tables stretched across the room, each covered with a hand-sewn tablecloth. Candle sticks in the middle awaited prayer. Twelve place settings gleamed alongside crystal glasses and holiday silver. Matzoh rested beneath shiny handkerchiefs, and the Seder plate was filled with special ingredients — lamb bone, parsley, haroset, roasted egg, bitter greens and horseradish.
I gave my grandfather a bear hug, then raced into the kitchen to see my grandmother. It was a small apartment, and I needed only ten steps to reach the kitchen. My grandmother, Buddie — a name bestowed on her instead of “bubbe,” as other Jewish children called their grandmothers — greeted me with a smile, her wavy white hair slightly damp from the oven heat and her apron finger-marked. She gave me a big squeeze, then sent me back into the living room.
My mouth watered as I looked at the platters. Buddie made gefilte fish patties from fresh pike from the fishmonger, then laid ric-rac carrot slices on each one. She mixed up and rolled out matzoh balls so delicious that I never found comparable examples. She chopped and diced to concoct her home-made blend of hard-boiled egg, onion and diced chicken liver. Once or twice, she prepared small dishes of sautéed sweetbreads for my mother, my aunt and me. She cooked with love, and it showed.
I slipped onto the couch and sat next to my sister and my cousins. My grandfather, Zadie, sat at the head of the table and waited impatiently for the talking and laughter to quiet down. Buddie emerged from the kitchen and stood midtable to say her prayers over the candles, waving her hands in incantation and burying her face in her palms. When she lifted her face, it was coated with tears.
It was Zadie's turn now, and he nodded to the person at his right — usually my cousin Rich — to initiate the round-robin reading of the Haggadah. We each read a passage, sometimes tripping on the unusual names. We asked the four questions. We recited the plagues — my father adding “Volvos” every year as his personal plague. We got around the table once, maybe twice before we started to pop with excitement. Responding to my grandmother’s urging, my grandfather pushed forward to Dayenu. We sang, clapped, laughed and wished one another gut yuntif. Then we started the Seder meal. Course after course of flavors and foods we got no other time of the year. Buddie sat pen a hard-backed chair, exhausted but beaming as she watched the family.
While my mother and aunt washed dishes in the kitchen, Zadie dispatched the grandchildren to find the afikomen, the half piece of matzoh covered in cloth or paper he hid somewhere in the house. We disappeared into bedrooms, closets, bathrooms, living room, foyers looking for the afikomen. Zadie pronounced us “cold” or “warm” as we tore through the apartment. After thirty minutes, no one found it. We surrounded Zadie, practically climbing on him to get more clues. He laughed as he said “warmer” and then “hot.” I yelled, “There it is!” I lifted the tablecloth directly in front of Zadie and found the afikomen hidden beneath the tablecloth beneath his plate. Sneaky. He gave me a five dollar bill and handed out the same to the other kids.
Happy and full, we started to yawn, and the Seder dinner came to a close. My sister and I bundled into our jackets. Mom and Dad said their goodbyes and collected packages of leftovers from Buddie so we could enjoy Passover dishes again during the coming days. Buddie and Zadie hugged us, smiley and tearful at once. We headed home, falling asleep as soon as we climbed into the car.
After my grandparents died in the early 1980s, we enjoyed Passover Seder at my aunt's home and then at my cousin's home. But relatives died, others moved away, some lost interest, and the Seder traditions lost traction. Fortunately, relatives married, children arrived, the family morphed, and the Passover Seder returned in a different form, at a different house, with new and extended family members. The lights, love and belonging of Seder returned.
