A Long Line of Strong Women
Me & Paula
It was so wonderful to have my beloved cousin/twinsie, Paula, come visit the week before Christmas for a few days. She’s more like my sister, really. Paula used to babysit me when I was little and is in basically all of my childhood memories growing up in NJ. Paula’s mom, Lucille, was my dad’s sister ~ the Aunt Lucille who our oldest daughter, Luci, is named after and whose Ricotta Cookies recipe is in The Kindred Life. ❤️
Paula and I spent a few days doing everything artsy + crafty imaginable with my girls and looked through sepia-toned family photos late into the night.
I’m floored by these photos she shared with me that I’ve never seen before.
This first one is a real gem of little me in braided pigtails with my dad and Aunt Lucille. Dad’s Cheech mustache is the best. But I love this photo because it shows the casual yet secure love between me and Aunt Lucille. Also, it reminds me of the plastic bag full of hair ties and bows I remember from growing up and how my mom would fix my hair.
My dad, Aunt Lucille, and me
The next photo is my grandmother, Maria, holding her baby boy, my dad, on his christening day. Maria was born in NYC because my great-grandmother was pregnant with her on the boat from Sciacca, Sicily. My grandmother was taken from her mother when she was a child because a truancy officer saw her and her younger siblings hanging out on the fire escape of their apartment on Elizabeth Street in Greenwich Village, NYC. She was raised until she was 15 in a Catholic orphanage and then went to work in a factory. My grandma passed away when I was 8, and I’ve never seen her smile like in this photo. Whenever I smile close-mouthed like this, my youngest daughter says, “How do you make that little hole appear between your lips?” and I always say, “It’s just how my lips are.” This is why.
My grandma, Maria, holding my dad
The third photo is her mother, my great-grandmother Accursia from Sicily. Again with the wide smile that’s carried on in my own daughters. I know Accursia had a really hard life - she worked in a factory in NYC, lost children and had so many hardships - she even lost one of her legs from diabetes, and died relatively young. But I can’t stop looking at her face. It looks weathered but her smile is genuine, and her eyes are smiling too.
My great grandma, Accursia
Just two generations later, what a different life I have. But I can’t help but think about how I’m bolstered by their strength everyday, the stories of these women whose blood runs through my own. I feel them in the bread I make and break, the tomatoes I grow, the children whose hands I hold.
Steven and I are saving up for an epic pilgrimage back to Italy in a few years (we’ve both been there, before we met each other), and we’re planning to go to Sicily for the first time. 🙏🏼 The last photo is Sciacca, the colorful fishing town where my grandmother is from. Cannot wait to see this with my own eyes.
Image source: Expedia
There are many more - Fortunata, Calogera, Victoria… more women on this side of the family, and I wonder what their lives were like. I wrote about more strong women in my family in my book, including my awesome mom and mother-in-law, and the women I met in India and Africa.
I’ll continue to lift up the stories of other women as long as I live.
