Home

We recently returned to my hometown of Rochester, New York to visit family.  It is a joy to grocery shop at Wegmans, eat Abbotts custard as I walk along the Charlotte Beach pier and to drive through downtown, pointing out to my kids my two favorite buildings: the sandwich and the clippers.  These are moments from my childhood that I love living over again.

I lived in a great neighborhood when I was a kid where my two best friends lived just across the street.  We would play board games or Atari at my house, Super Mario brothers at Laurie’s house and Sonic at Heather’s house.  We’d swim, play gymnastics, ride our bikes to the local grocery mart for candy, walk to school together, build leaf forts, have bouncy ball competitions and race in the snow.  

Each May my family would go to the Lilac Festival.  We would take a picnic dinner, walk around the tulips beds first and then head over to the large hill covered in deep purple, light purple and white lilac bushes.  My dad would always sniff his way through, finding the most fragrant bush, while making jokes about tulip and four-lip trees.  He always made the five of us (or whoever was home) stand in a certain tree for a sister picture.  We’d see the pansies and end with a walk through the rhododendrons before heading home.   

Every year we would go to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which is a huge outdoor show that tells the story of the Book of Mormon put on by my church in July.  For two weeks the hill is transformed with a large stage, light towers and 10,000 seats.  From the age of nine until I was seventeen, my family was able to participate in the Pageant as cast members many times and at least half of my memorable spiritual experiences from my childhood happened on that hill.  It was so exciting to take my almost five-year-old daughter and my three-year-old son to the Pageant for the first time this summer.  It doesn’t start until 9:15pm when it gets dark and while it was late, my children were mesmerized and hardly took their eyes off of the stage that entire time.  When I asked them what their favorite parts were, they surprised me with their answers.  It was not the most dramatic parts they liked best, but the more spiritual moments when things were quiet and peaceful.  I couldn’t help but think of all of the special experiences I have had at Pageant and it made me so happy to think my kids felt some of that too and were creating their own special experiences that are connected to mine.

When I was a kid my family also regularly went down to Charlotte Beach for Abbotts custard and we would walk along Lake Ontario as we ate it.   Almost every week I went grocery shopping with my mom at Wegmans.  My family often took picnics to Braddock’s Bay park where we would look for birds, play badminton and frisbee.  Driving around Rochester I can’t help but feel comfortable and happy as I remember all of these experiences.

That is the magic of home.  Yes Rochester is a nice city but home is about family and good friends.  I do absolutely love eating Abbots custard, but eating it alone would never be the same as eating it while walking down the pier with a friend or my family.  Home is about people who know you and love you and remember when you were a kid.  It is about having history and shared experiences with people.  I love going to the church where I grew up and seeing people who have known me since I was a baby and appreciate who I’ve grown up to be.  They know my parents and my sisters and I feel connected.  It is nice to be in a place where someone can look at me and ask, “Aren’t you a Burningham girl?”  

As I struggle to be a mom and with other adult problems, it is nice to visit a place where I’m loved and accepted and known, where I belong to a bigger family. I don’t have to prove myself. The people at home already know me and love me and welcome me back any time I’m able to visit. So while my husband sometimes teases me about loving Rochester so much, what I really love is home.