" I love birds, she says dreamily into her son's ear, or maybe she just thinks it, she the one who taught him to name and spot the rare ones-the bar-tailed godwit, the whimbrel and Blackburnian warbler-just as her father had taught her, first from the fields and beach, then from inside, his wheelchair by the window, Petersons and binoculars in his lap, and she'd bike to the salt creek or climb to the top of the Teal Rock and sit there waiting, then ride back and drop her bike on the grass and go inside, to where the names flew from her mouth into her father's ears, a gift for both of them.

"I love birds." She says it again, or maybe for the first time.
"I know," Charlie says. "

― Elizabeth Graver , The End of the Point