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My mother never made a seder in our apartment until after my grandmother died. When I was growing up, we always spent Passover at my grandparents' house. We would go there a few days before the holiday so that my mother, the only daughter with seven brothers, could help prepare for the holiday. This meant taking my brother and me out of school for close to two weeks, but that was how it had to be. We stayed until after the holiday was over. I can remember leaving for Passover with the world all gray and frosty, and returning home to sunshine and budding trees.

My grandparents' house was a huge brownstone on Morton Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The upper two floors were rented to two rabbinical families. My grandparents and their large family occupied the lower two floors. That home was a halfway house for immigrants -- relatives, friends, landsleit (hometowners) -- who stayed there until they got established in America. These guests were, of course, present at the seders.

The night before the first seder, my grandfather and I would search the house for chometz with a candle and a feather. The following morning, the chometz was burned in the pot-bellied coal stove in the basement. That meant no more bread until the holiday was over. A crate of eggs sat ready in the kitchen to be used in all the Passover delicacies including matzah brye with my favorite strawberry jelly made by my grandmother. The Passover dishes were brought up from the dusty basement and washed.

To the right of the entrance hall was a great dining room with a gigantic table and intricately carved dark furniture, which looked like ebony. Here was the location of the largest home seders I have ever seen -- always 30-50 people. Small tables were added to the dining table to accommodate everyone. My bachelor Uncle Hymie presided over the children's section as both instigator of mischief and policeman. We plodded endlessly through every single word in the first part of the Haggadah before all my cousins and I, with our voracious appetites, could get something to eat. Often the service would be interrupted and lengthened by talmudic debates between my learned grandfather and one of his sons.

Stealing the matzah was the community effort of at least eight children with Uncle Hymie as their conspirator and negotiator. Afikomen gifts were not cash. We received lace trimmed socks and embroidered handkerchiefs. The children were not allowed to drink wine but could sip a little of the raisin wine my grandfather made especially for my grandmother. My grandmother told of opening the door for Elijah when she was a child in Europe and a cat walked in. I thought that would be fun but although I waited, it never happened when I held the door open. Following the meal, when the rest of the Haggadah was read, the kids could not sit still any longer. They flew around the house and slid down the stair banisters with Uncle Hymie in pursuit.

When the seder was over, mountains of pots, dishes, and silverware had to be washed and dried by hand as there was no dishwasher. Called upon to dry dishes, a job I hated, I always managed to drop a few and was finally relieved of that chore. As my mother and aunts cleaned up the mess, we could hear noise from the two seders hosted by the rabbis who lived upstairs. They started late and the singing and dancing could be heard long after I went to bed.

My birthday, April 25, often occurred during Passover. That meant no birthday party, no store-bought birthday cake, and no Bungalow Bar ice cream for me when the truck came down the street. My grandmother made a special birthday cake for me of sponge cake and fresh strawberries so that I would not feel deprived.

Since my cousins only came for the seders, during the rest of my stay at my grandparents' house I had nobody to play with. Although the seders were fun, the remaining days there were lonely. In the parlor, I played an antique wind-up victrola or a player piano. Alone, I could not play the Passover games on the sidewalk with nuts. There was nothing to read in that house except for The Wonderland of Knowledge encyclopedia and a two-volume dictionary that I still have. Everything else was in Hebrew or Yiddish. I learned to read the Yiddish newspaper there and later wrote letters to my grandmother in Yiddish. She claimed that she could not read English but this was just a ruse to get me to use Yiddish. When I learned to speak and write Yiddish well, the family could no longer use it when they wanted to say something I should not hear. So at those moments, they switched to Polish. Of course, after a while, I learned some Polish words, too.

Now, when I make or attend a seder, I remember seders on Morton Street and look forward to the singing. But most people do not remember the melodies or do not like to sing them as I do. I miss singing the Passover melodies with a large group. So every now and then, if my seder at home promises to be small, I attend a second seder at a temple led by a rabbi and cantor, not for the food but for the pleasure of having 250 other people sing Passover songs with me.