My husband Chuck and I spent the weekend in Pittsburgh, our hometown. We traveled there on a long, nightmarish flight – another story for another time – for two big parties on separate days.

My youngest nieces, Becky and Lizzie, are the last of the Sciullo clan’s 10 offspring to graduate high school. Their celebrations overflowed with sumptuous food, shared memories and talk of college plans – a juxtaposition of past and present that more than once turned time’s canvas inside out.

Impressions are shifting through my mind like random photos in a digital slideshow. Here are some of them:

- My great-niece Celia, a 3-year-old who looks remarkably like her mom did at that age – big eyes, sandy hair, long legs. But the resemblance ends there. While Lainey was a shy, easy-going child, her little daughter prattles and schemes – a charming combination that can create moments of high drama. My favorite Celia story: During a recent trip to Target, her dad reprimanded her for misbehaving. Insulted and miffed, the child stood up in the shopping cart and announced – “I will never be good. NEVER.”

- Three younger sisters sitting with me at a patio table discussing hairstyles. The topic was “Going Grey: When We First Grabbed the Dye Bottle.” How many times over the years had we played out this scene with entirely different dialog? Up-dos for proms; long hair with bridal veils; pregnancy’s limp locks; tight perms in the ‘80s; big hair in the ‘90s; summer vacation’s frizz; hair loss with chemo – a life story told with hairspray, shampoo, wigs and curling irons.

- Nephews in their 20s and 30s – strapping guys with big hands and feet and stubbly faces. Gentle and awkward, they had to bend down to hug me. When these men boomed “Hi, Aunt Marita” in dark baritones, the echo of children’s voices rang in my ears.

- Chuck teasing my niece, Emily, while she giggled and blushed. Her mother, Ginny, was only 7 when my husband and I started dating. He used to call her “Grinch” and she adored him. On too many warm summer evenings, my little sister would wedge herself between us on the front porch glider, reading jokes from a gargantuan volume of the world’s 500 funniest stories. Chuck was an 18-year-old healthy adolescent who had the car only one night a week, but he always laughed and never complained. No wonder I married him.

- My daughter, Jessica, explaining to her aunts how surgeons control bleeding after making incisions. Now a physician on faculty at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Jessie showed the same quiet authority when, at about age 6, she used an orange marker to perform appendectomies on her favorite dolls.

- And finally, food, the most important element of any Italian family gathering. Ricotta-stuffed shells swimming in tomato sauce; meatballs, big enough for three or four bites; super-spicy hot sausages flecked with red pepper; fried chicken, salty, crispy and moist; Chex mix and cocktail peanuts; fruit salad with summer’s first melons; and of course, a double-decker cake from Pittsburgh’s best Italian bakery – chocolate and white, topped with butter-cream frosting and piped roses.

I honestly cannot count how many times this meal – or variations here and there – have marked births and baptisms, bridal and baby showers, confirmations and graduations. For a good while after dinner, Celia and all her little cousins sported tomato-sauced lips and cheeks. But then, a long time ago at other gatherings like this one, so had their moms and dads.

By Marita