“Home” IS Where The Heart Is

Our house belonged to everyone

The image above is a present photo of the home in which I was raised in Rochester, New York — on Erie Street. This sturdy red-brick house sits across from where now stands Frontier Field, in the shadow of the global offices of the famed Eastman Kodak Company, up the street from the original global office of Xerox (i.e. the Haloid company, the beginnings of Xerox, began in the building across the street from us).

In the original design of the house (circa the 1880s), our home served as the servants quarters to the mansion that once stood beside it — while the house in between ours and the mansion was a stable for horses.

Our home was “the house” of our family, which included the immediate family including myself, my parents, Pompeii and Francesca Pilato, and sister Pamela. Next door — my Aunt Elva and Uncle Carl Easton, and our cousin Evie (who was like a sister to me and my sister).

The extended family included uncles and aunts and cousins that hailed from the fact that both my Mom and Dad had ten brothers and sisters each and each of those brothers and sisters that had numerous children.

Our home was filled with people almost every day and night for various parties and holidays through the years — and was open to friends and neighbors of all good kinds and souls. It was a beautiful and simple time.

God bless our house…our home….which to this day has taught me that every home, house, apartment, condo, mansion, is blessed and any group of people may define themselves as “family” — wherever they live — and wherever Love is an integral part of the equation.