Don’t let my name fool you. While my paternal ties are Celtic knots, I was raised by my mother’s family, an extended Italian-American clan of aunts, uncles and innumerable cousins. For us, food is more than just sustenance. It’s the joyous, sacred communion of family and tradition.

In the 1930s, my grandfather opened Catalano’s Market, a small Italian grocery filled with cured meats, imported cheeses and barrels of olives. Known for its warm atmosphere and spicy sausage, “The Store” prospered. My earliest memories are set in its narrow aisles and in our home above it, a sprawling, two-level apartment with a huge kitchen. We filled this kitchen with decades of laughter and tears, the shared things that make you a family.

Time has passed and our family has changed. We sold The Store. My grandfather passed away. The children and grandchildren received the degrees my grandparents worked hard to give us. And like so-called educated offspring do, many of us promptly fled.

Yet several times a year, we are all drawn back to Nonna’s kitchen, which is not above The Store anymore, but in the house she always wanted. Here, we feast again on deliciously loud Sunday dinners. Here, we remember who we are.

Slow-cooked in an ancient vat, Nonna’s Sauce is our family treasure. The recipe is an oral tradition. No one has ever bothered to write it down. We don’t have to; it’s embedded somewhere deep in our genetic code.

To go with Nonna’s Sauce, we favor hearty stuffed pastas, such as manicotti (pronounced “manna-GOAT!”) and raviolis. Manicotti is simple, but raviolis take a little more work. Although Nonna and her sisters made it appear effortless when they rolled out the dough by hand and shaped the raviolis with the rim of a glass, the next generation relies on a pasta machine and special trays.

But this mechanized process is becoming a new family tradition. We gather around the table on a Friday night, laughing, arguing and making imperfect pasta until 2 a.m. Nonna, now 92, sits at the head of the table, overseeing our sometimes futile efforts. She scolds our inefficiency and torn dough, but I sense that when she sees her family all together again, cooking and carrying on traditions, she’s proud.

For a while, I was encouraging her to write down her recipes and I would make it into a book to give to our family. She quickly dismissed this idea with a hand gesture. She knows that she already has given us everything we need. She has nourished us with such an intense love of life and family that our table remains overflowing, even when our bellies are full.

Happy Mother’s Day, Nonna.