I have lived in only two houses in my entire life, only one of which I can remember. I was born in San Francisco and lived there until I was two years old, at which time I moved to the house I am currently living in, in San Mateo. It is a two story house¬, although, technically, it has four floors. (If of course, you include the basement/pantry and our abnormally large attic) I’m not really sure what my house looks like to anyone but me. It has brown wood paneling everywhere, except near the door and windows, where there is white paneling all along the edges. We have two balconies. Sort of. One is off my parent’s bedroom, and has a deck atop our roof, well part of it anyway. The other one is off my room and link my brother’s room to mine, through the outdoor balcony. We have the biggest house on our block, and from the front, it looks like a dollhouse.
We have a roof that (when looking at it from the street, the front of our house) is flat along the top, and the slants at the sides. There are two large windows, my brother’s and mine. It reminds me of the house from Alice in Wonderland, minus the hay roof of course.

My kitchen has a pink tile floor and grayish blue cabinets lining almost every wall. They all have silver (some type of metal anyway) square knobs and are cool to the touch, no matter the temperature. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. We recently got a small TV in there that I watch during breakfast on the weekends. There is also a small area where we have our breakfast table. It sticks out of the wall, touching our deck, and windows all around it so that we can see out over our pool, into our backyard, and out to my old play structure and giant trampoline.
Years from now I will probably remember the trampoline I have outside. The play structure I have with the rock climbing wall and swing set. The garden I spent hours in during the summer with my dad, planting his precious tomatoes and zucchini. And the countless days I spent in my pool, doing nothing more than simply floating in it, praying for summer not to come to an end.
I don’t remember my old house at all. I don’t remember what it looked like, what it smelled like. Or even what it felt like to simply live in it. I know that there were two very tall purple bushes, layered with hundreds of tiny flowers outside our old garage, but now that we live here in San Mateo, they seem like nothing but a trivial memory now. My current house is so much bigger than any house I have ever lived in, and I love it very much. I don’t know what it smells or feels like. What it looks like to others, or even what it means to others, but to me, it means, smells, feels, and looks like…home.