Jackson reflects that “becoming homeless doesn’t happen all at once” (89). His mother compares it to having a cold; the effects escalate gradually. For Jackson, though, becoming homeless felt like it happened without warning. His father had been sick and his mother laid off. One day, they lived “in a nice house with a swing set” and the next in their minivan (90). He allows for the “weird” nature of memory (90). He feels that he should have been upset about losing the family home and his friends, but instead he felt living in the minivan was going to be fun.

The family moved out of their house at the end of Jackson’s first-grade year. Though his parents did not “own a lot of stuff,” their possessions filled the minivan. Alone in the van as he waited for his parents and Robin, Jackson noticed the back windshield wiper, which was “awfully hairy,” swishing back and forth, despite the sunny day (92). He rushed outside to look and saw that the windshield wiper was neither moving nor hairy, and he realized “that something was about to change” (93).