I have often written about tradition and I very proudly relate yet one more story.

At the Passover Seder (the traditional meal at which the story of the exodus from Egypt is retold), we eat bitter herbs (to remember the bitterness of slavery). For the bitter herbs, my family uses raw horseradish. I remember my father grating the large horseradish root and the pungent, tear-producing, fumes. A task that I now endure as I prepare for the holiday. The burn of the swallowed bitter herbs is a high point of the Seder.

Many years ago, at my first Seder with Flo's family, I learned that her family did not grate the horseradish but rather cut the root into strips. Since that first Seder with her family, I have prepared both grated and cut bitter herbs.

Last week, as she prepared for her Seders in Washington, my daughter, Mea, called me and asked me to recount the reason for our tradition of eating both grated and cut horseradish as bitter herbs. With a smile (and an enormous sense of having done something right as a parent), I shared the history.

And so, the tradition will live on.