Every year, when spring time rolls around, there's this thing I like to do with my family.

I like to lead them in a reading of the ten plagues, you know, the punishments that God

delivers to Egypt to get the Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery.

Alright, so it goes like this.

We'll be sitting around the table and it goes call and respond style.

I go, blood, my family goes, blood.

I go frogs.

They go frogs.

Lice, lice, wild beasts, wild beasts.

And as is the custom, we each dip a finger in our wine glasses or grape juice and we make

little droplets on our plates as we recite each plague all the way down to killing of the

first born.

This of course is part of the Jewish Passover Seder ritual, except that we're not very religious

in my family, so we kind of speed through the ceremony to get to the ten plagues and

then we have dinner.

Still, I think this ritual reminds us of our heritage, like why we're even here alive

as Jews and how for generations people were trying to kill us, but we survived.

So, you know, let's eat.

Another tradition in my home is that we have tamales on Christmas Eve.

That's because my husband is Latino.

But my husband and I, we are not as close to our ethnic roots as our parents are.

And our daughter is one generation further removed than either of us.

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