The Volvo

The speaker remembers that once, in the family's Volvo, his grandmother said to him, "I hope you never love anyone as much as I love you" (82). Here, the speaker notes that his grandmother used the "unxclamation point," which denotes a whisper. This setting is an intimate one, and the gravity of the grandmother's statement shows how affected she has been by her experience having lost all of her siblings in the Holocaust.

The Zoo

The parking lot of the zoo is where the speaker's father fights for a parking spot with another angry patron. The speaker's father remains calm and attempts to explain that they were there first, but the man screams at him to give it up. Eventually, the speaker's father finds another parking spot and tells his children, "It is never, ever worth it" as he clutches his heart (83). Here, readers can see how careful...