Honoring Our Ancestors

Honoring Our Ancestors – Part 1

by Katiuscia Lanza Baldwin

This idea or notion of honoring our ancestors became important to me when I lost my Nonno Antonio in 2003. Losing him was my first experience with grief. My first broken heart. Sometimes the most significant challenges that we face in life put us through a time of transformation. It is then that I transformed into the keeper or guardian of the family — keeping, organizing, storing, and cherishing heirlooms, photographs, letters, mementos, artwork, guitars, artifacts, furniture, and the piano.

My home is surrounded with these mementos, these cherished objects that keep the memory of my loved ones and my ancestors alive in my home. My daughter was barely 2 years old when my nonno passed away, and my son never got the opportunity to meet his bisnonno. Sharing the stories with my children, and with my family is something that I try to do consistently. Storytelling is one of the easiest and most effective ways to honor our ancestors. I have always kept their photos up around the house in hopes that my children would grow up knowing them, seeing them through photos and stories.

As an artist, one of the most natural ways for me to honor and remember my loved ones and ancestors was through my art. Over the last decade, my artwork has been a compilation of portraits of my bisnonna Irma, a memento mori of my Nonna Edda's belongings, a painting of the doorway of my ancestral home in Petacciato, Italy, where my nonno was born, an old Sicilian boat that would have belonged to my Nonno Antonino, and a portrait of my Nonna Francesca in traditional Sicilian clothing. The list goes on of all that I have created to honor my family through my art.

Many years ago, I started doing research for documents such as marriage, birth, and death records of my ancestors in Italy through U.S. and Italian sites. I was able to trace back 7 or 8 generations through my Nonno Antonio’s lineage. Through this research, I discovered that several generations of my family lived an hour or so away from our ancestral home in Petacciato. In this town called Pianella, there was a church called San Salvatore. This church is where several ancestors married and baptized their children.

Back in 2017, my mother and I traveled to Italy to spend time with my family and my 2 great-aunts. My great-aunts, my mother and I went on a road trip to Pianella. We walked through the town and met a man who ran a laundromat who knew a long-lost cousin with my grandfather's last name. We continued walking through the town when an elderly woman called us to follow her so she could show us the Madonna Nera, the Black Madonna statue embedded into the exterior part of a wall in a little shrine.

It was an extremely hot day in the middle of summer, and 2 men brought us a pitcher of water. We told them we were on a search to find this church, la Chiesa di San Salvatore. They told us the church was gone, and I felt devastated because I so wanted to see this church in person. I knew from photos that it was in ruins, but I didn’t think it was completely gone.

Then we started walking, and I chose one road. As we continued down this road, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the ruins of San Salvatore. It was one of the most amazing discoveries that I have found — 4,360 miles away from home. The floor and the back of the church stood, part of the altar and steps leading up to it. I sat on those steps and started to cry. It was such an emotional experience to be sitting on the steps where my ancestors once stood.

After that, we continued to walk and found a street sign called the Via delle Dee, the Way of the Goddesses. Then we explored some more of Pianella, only to find the Caffè degli Artisti, the café of the artists. It definitely felt like things were just meant to be during this trip.

We met the owner of the café, and we explained what we were doing. When he asked our family last name, he told us one of his employees, a young woman who worked for him, had the same last name. After the café, we went back to the laundromat man who knew this family member, a distant cousin, and we followed him to the house of this family member. He and his wife welcomed us into their home to look at photos and talk. We discovered that my Nonno Antonio had also taken this trip to discover Pianella, his roots, and the same distant cousin years ago. It’s interesting how sometimes the path we take today might crossover the path taken from a loved one, just at different times.

There are so many ways to honor our ancestors: through art, stories, music, food, celebrations, language, and travel. The most important thing is that we find a way to do it.

con amore,

Katiuscia