U-Haul
I’ve lived in seven different houses throughout my life. It’s not that many, as movement in life is expected, but when you think about the fact that I’m barely twenty-one years old, it changes the perspective.
The first house I ever lived in was in Springwater, NY. My parents, brother, and I lived in a small, red house that was special to me. That was where my cousins and I would dance to “She’s Country” by Jason Aldean while our socks slid over the black and white checkered tile of the kitchen, where my brother, Connor, and I would watch Thomas the Train every Sunday morning while eating pancakes on Mom’s beloved 70s floral sofa, and where Noni and I would drink her steaming hot coffee in whichever mug I chose for her that day. I remember the first time I lost a tooth and the first time I made someone else lose a tooth. I remember the color of the walls in each room, the iconic pink porcelain of the bathroom sink, toilet, and bathtub. I remember the time I burned my hand on the pellet stove. I lived in this house until I was five.
The second place I lived in was a small, white duplex in Malone, NY. I don’t remember the moving process, as my mom was adamant that I wasn’t old enough to pack (she had a point), so I didn’t do much. I learned years later that we moved to Malone after finding out that the red house, as we lovingly call it, had black mold. The house was recently repainted a medium grey color. In Malone, we lived on the corner of Stevens and Primrose Streets, right down the road from the Franklin County fairgrounds. This house was not the greatest, but it was the place where I watched the 1990 miniseries version of Stephen King’s It and The Sound of Music with my mom and Connor for the first time—on the same night. This was also the house where I learned to make my own food and wash my own hair. It was the house where I made a necklace for my dad—one with green and blue, circular wooden beads hanging on a navy-blue shoelace. My dad still wears that necklace to this day. He’s never gone a day without it; he even asked me a few months ago to change the string on it again because he is afraid of it breaking and losing the discolored wooden beads. After my grandfather died in June 2011, my parents decided to move closer to my grandma, so we moved from Malone after two years—I was seven.
The third house was in Norwood, NY. We rented this duplex from the same man—a friend of my dad’s—as we did the house in Malone. It needed a lot of work. As we lived there, the linoleum floors were sinking and sloping. The plaster started peeling off the drywall in the bedroom I shared with my brother, and the basement kept flooding to the point where we couldn’t use the washer or dryer. A lot of firsts happened in this house, too. My first sleepover, my first time seeing a family member recover from surgery, my first time having friends and inviting them over. Even the first time I remember my parents arguing on my birthday. After the man who owned the house died, we started looking to move, as his wife wanted to fix up the place. Although my parents thought we were there for five years too long, we moved from “the house on the hill” when I was twelve.
The following house was the place I lived throughout the rest of the five years I was in school—just down the road from the last one in Norwood. This house was owned by someone my dad went to high school with in the early 1980s, and he offered us an extremely reduced rent. He said we could do anything we wanted to the house. This was where I got the first pet I remember and where I painted my room for the first time. I left this house to go to my first prom, my first date, and my high school graduation. I took my first sip of alcohol and had my first kiss in that house. I developed a love for languages and journaling, as well as a longing to change the world. I came out to my parents and brother in this house, and remembered every word they said in response. I was staying with my cousins over the summer when Denny, the man who we rented from, asked us to move out as he needed to move back in. My family had two weeks to find a place, pack up, and move out. I was in the middle of my first semester of college when my family moved out of this house—I was eighteen.
After moving out of Denny’s house, my family was forced to downsize from a full three-bedroom house to a one-bedroom apartment in Potsdam, New York. It was tiny, and they hated it. Although this apartment was my permanent address, I never actually lived there—all of my things were shoved into a storage unit on the other side of town while the one bedroom went to my parents and my brother’s bed was in the living room. That’s all I really know.
Once a bigger apartment was available, my family moved across the complex. This was a two-bedroom apartment, and my brother and I were forced to share a room again. There wasn’t actually much sharing going on since Connor was offered an RA position and lived on campus at SUNY Potsdam, but I hated the idea of sharing a room again. I wasn’t at this house for a long time—just from winter break from my first semester of college when I gifted my family items in Mario Kart wrapping paper and the summer where I started working in Potsdam. We hated being there since the upstairs neighbor only walked on his heels, and the neighbors next to us talked very loudly on the phone while chain-smoking cigarettes. I hated doing laundry there, especially during the winter, as we would have to go to the laundromat across town during snowstorms so my parents could have clean uniforms for work. Still, there were some good memories there—it was the first Christmas I could really afford to get my family the things I thought they would like. Together, my mom and I watched my first Formula One race, and I lived there while I watched my best friend Piper graduate from high school. I’m glad we’re not there anymore for the sake of my parents’ sanity. I was nineteen when we moved.
The house where I currently live is in Canton, NY. We finally have a three-bedroom house again, and there are even two bathrooms. My brother and I don’t have to share a room anymore—in fact, it’s more common for me to spend the night on the sofa in his apartment than in my own bed—and we don’t have to worry about obnoxious neighbors or being across the street from a bar in the center of town. We are close to town, which is nice for the winter, but not too close. I can play my music and be on the phone without fearing that my mom can hear me from the other side of the wall. My room has plenty of space to display my countless trinkets and books, and my cat has more than enough space to run around. We have a nice deck that I am excited to spend my first post-graduation summer lounging on while reading books. I really like it there, and I think my family is finally happy, too.
I like to think that each of these places makes up a row of bricks in whatever future house I’ll live in. I’ll be able to look around and notice the framed artwork from my nursery in the red house and the One Direction’s Take Me Home album sitting next to what kids today would consider a vintage CD player. I’ll look at the bookshelf and see the beloved copy of Mary Engelbreit’s Fairy Tales that my mom and I used to read together before I went to sleep. There’ll be the coloring books I kept from late middle school and remember coloring with my mom and grandma on tray tables in the living room of the first house in Norwood, and bins upon bins of art supplies that I’ve been collecting since I started journaling in my room of Denny’s house. I’ll be able to see the stuffed animals I’ve received from my brother and my friends throughout my first year of college. I’ll definitely be found, one day, sitting at the white, two-layered desk I bought for my room at my current house. And even after I pack all of those things up to move once again, I’ll think about all these memories associated with the items I’ve collected.
Samantha McGinnis is a senior adolescent education / English major at SUNY Geneseo. After graduating in May 2026, Samantha hopes to pursue a master’s degree in school librarianship. Samantha is an avid romance reader and cozy game enthusiast who found her love of editing and publishing through working on Gandy Dancer for two years, serving as the production assistant the second year. This experience has inspired her to someday start a magazine of her own in a school library.