For as long as I can remember, Passover has always been at my grandmother’s house in California. Every year, my family would wake up at 5:30 to reach the airport on time. We’d check our copious bags and board the plane that would take us to the other side of the country. No matter how many times we made the trip, when we stepped off the plane we always marveled at how much warmer Los Angeles was than Philadelphia. We’d speed through baggage claim, the airport shuttle, and the car rental, then we were roaring down the streets of strange new cities – Pico, Robertson, Beverly Hills – until we reached the blue house on Almont Street and knew that we had arrived.

The house was filled with pictures of all of the cousins, as well as many paintings and other art. I have never seen so much art in any other house. There were shelves and shelves of books about every subject imaginable. My brothers and I slept in my father’s old bedroom, crammed with a third mattress. On lazy mornings, I would look at the objects on my father’s bookshelf and try to imagine what he was like at my age. Soon, our cousins would arrive and fill the other bedrooms.

The house was scrubbed clean of any leavened bread, forbidden for the week-long holiday. It was filled with food that my grandmother had ordered from the caterer, enough to feed 11 people for the entire week. My grandmother would greet us with hugs and kisses, then show us the croissants she had bought at a nearby French bakery. We’d eat them carefully so as not to get crumbs on the floor.

When the sun went down, we’d hide pieces of bread around the house and search for them by candlelight. We laughed, pointing and directing my father as he searched to make sure that every piece of bread was cleaned up. We listened solemnly as he read a passage nullifying his ownership of the bread.

Later that night, our cousins would arrive from northern California. We’d wait up for them, excited for the moment when the two branches of the family, separated for a year, came together again. My cousins are younger than me, but that didn’t stop us from being close.

In the morning, we’d burn the bread that we had found the night before. I was always scared of the fire, lit inside a trash can in the parking lot of my grandmother’s synagogue. I threw the bread from far away and usually missed. My brothers were braver, approaching the fire and tossing the bread in as if it were a game of basketball. The fire truck was there, and we hoped that the firemen would let us inside. We always hoped they had brought their dog.

When we got home, preparation for that night’s Seder would begin in full force. During the Seder, we retell the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. We read a text called the Haggada, which tells the story at length, and then we discuss it. And we do rituals to make us feel like we too have been freed from slavery. This requires a lot of preparation. In the living room, my mother and I set the long table for the Seder. We put a Haggada next to each place and pillows for those who want to recline.

We then prepared the many objects for the night. We sliced horseradish and washed lettuce. We prepared heaping plates of parsley and crystal bowls of saltwater. We poured charoset – a sweet spread made of apples, nuts, and grape juice – into bowls. We expertly arranged these objects, along with a roasted shank bone and boiled egg, on my great-grandfather’s silver Seder plate. We then took crackling rounds of handmade matza and placed them in their cover on the table.

We were good Jewish day school kids, my brothers and I. We came clutching packages of projects that we had spent the past month of school creating for the Seder: matza covers, pillowcases, washing bowls, and much more. Each of us held countless speeches, thoughts, and ideas in our heads that we had heard from our teachers or prepared ourselves. We were punch-drunk with anticipation, bursting to share our ideas with the family. This was our night. You see, the Seder is dedicated to the children, to those who ask questions, to those who use the answers to take their place in our national history.

My father led the Seder, as always. He read and sang, retelling the story of the Exodus. My brothers and I jumped in constantly to share thoughts connected to the passages he read. At a certain point he had to tell us to stop; he could not allow us to share all of our ideas. The reason was simple: the guests at our Seder were diverse. While we were Orthodox Jews, our cousins were not. While we delighted in sharing ideas that we had learned in day school, others lacked the background to appreciate them. Some just wanted to get to the food.

I won’t pretend that it didn’t hurt when my father told me not to share my ideas, but part of growing up was learning to understand why my father did this, and realizing that it was the right thing.

When I was a child, I never realized what a difficult balancing act the Seders were for my father. I didn’t realize that my siblings and I, my cousins, and the guests all wanted different things, and my father was caught in the middle. But as I matured, I began to notice. I noticed that my cousins would turn on the lights when I would not. That they would eat in restaurants that I would not eat in. And the moment I noticed those differences I tried to erase them, wanting to go back to the childlike state in which differences don’t matter.

As I grew older, I became a mediator myself. I learned who used transliterated Haggadot and who used Hebrew ones. I learned to measure which ideas were appropriate to share and which would bore the audience. I learned to limit myself and to not feel bad about it. Instead, I used the Seder as an opportunity to engage my younger siblings and cousins, preparing games and activities for them. I made the night a chance to give to others. That is how I came to love our Seders.

This Passover, my grandmother’s seat was empty. But we still went back to the blue house in Los Angeles one last time.

The house seemed quieter this time, and my father’s voice less confident. We all felt the loss of my grandmother, the memory of Passovers when she was with us. We were all aware that this was probably the last time we would come together here. Perhaps because of this, the Seder was more beautiful to me than any before. I sang my heart out, joining the rest of my family as we lifted our voices in song. I had never felt what family is as strongly as I did that night. I could not imagine having the Seder any other way.

I do not know where we will have our Seders in the future, but I will miss the blue house on Almont Street, the place where I grew up, the place where I learned what family is.