The older you get, the more memories you have and the more you begin to wonder if those memories are real. Every Passover, I’m beset with a flood of memories.
I was fortunate to live next door to one set of grandparents and a couple of blocks from the other. At Passover this was especially nice. My father’s parents lived down the street from the elementary school and their house was the perfect stopping place for an after school Passover snack. And soda was allowed. It was always Cott’s and 
the flavor was orange. Grandma Bessie also kept a supply of fruit jellies, a once a year treat. Who would want to eat those sickly sweet artificially favored candies more than once a year?
My Grandma Bessie made the best sponge cake with a thick brown skin on top. Using her recipe I’ve come close, but the cake I bake, light and spongy as it is, just isn’t the same. Maybe it’s the pan she baked it in; maybe it was all that beating of a dozen eggs by hand; maybe it’s just memory. I can understand how the taste of madeleines tantalized Proust.
My other grandmother didn’t bake and she didn’t cook so well either, a trait that my mother unfortunately inherited. But Grandma Fannie did make gefilte 
fish from scratch, complete with a few bones. She did make great matzah spread with sweet butter and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Even today, many years later, matzah and butter mean Passover to me.
Passover was also the time to bring out the kichel and adapt Grandma Bessie’s chopped herring for Passover. Kichel and chopped herring deliver very complex flavors and textures. There’s the sweetness and crunchiness of the kichel, the saltiness of the herring; the sour notes from the pickling process and the chewy texture of the larger chopped pieces. Try it sometimes.
The taste of the sweet Passover wine, always Manischewitz, seemed delicious to a child. We were actually allowed to have four cups of wine, very small cups. But we always slept very well on seder nights.
The sound of the Four Questions changed as one child took over from the next. As the eldest, my tenure as question asker was brief, but the younger of my two brothers lasted until my own children were old enough to ask the questions. My brother’s voice went from that of a young child, to a preadolescent to that of a young man and finally a mature adult.
My father took over the Seders as my grandparents aged. He had a unique way of making sure that certain family members always got the same lines to read. I still wonder how he did it because the people around the table changed from year to year. My younger brother, who could be difficult at times, always read the rebellious son’s part. The youngest person who was able to read always got the fourth child, the one who did not know what to ask.
It’s been quite a few years since I sat at my parents’ seder table and even more since we all gathered around my grandparents’ tables, but as I prepare for Passover, I can still see the china and the crystal, the silver and the linen used only once a year and I am transported back through time and memory.
Children and grandchildren are all scattered now. It’s been a while since my siblings and I shared a Seder table. Now we have children and grandchildren of our own. But that sponge cake its still on the table, as are the fruit jellies, along with our own special treats. We laugh about my father’s orchestration of the readings. We admire the special items that belonged to our parents and grandparents and now grace our own holiday tables.
And we tell our children of our special evenings long ago spent with those who are no longer with us so that they, too, may remember.
Image by __MaRiNa__ 
used with permission via Creative Commons: Attribution License
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Your memories touched a note for me, as well. I only remember one of my grandmothers, the one whose husband both my cousin and I named for–both of our initials are “S.H.”, after “Solomon Hillel”. My mother’s siblings–a brother and a sister–lived in the same two-family house as my grandmother, and we always went there (a neighborhood called “Bensonhurst”) from our home in “Crown Heights”. At first it was a two trolley ride, until the updated the routes to buses.