The older I get, the more I see how much I got from my grandmother. My grandma is a word person, both usage and general interest. She whipped me at Scrabble when I was a kid, which taught me two things: 1) my grandma is way smarter than me, and 2) people who like Scrabble can be competitive. I suspect my interest in language and literature is due in part to her influence. She makes smart look very stylish.
And I also suspect that my interest in birds has its earliest origins with my grandmother. She's not a birder in the obsessive sense. But she made it her business to know what was up with the birds in the Tri-Cities.
When I was growing up, the bird guide at my grandparents' house was the first one I admired. I loved it more because it was a book than a book of birds, but I liked the illustrations. She and my grandfather had binoculars sitting at their front windows all the time. Those weren't just for birds, but it made it easier to see the family of quail that wandered through their yard in the morning and the evening. (My grandparents set out cracked corn for them.)
So thanks, Grandma, for both words and birds.
Photo from the Wikipedia entry for California Quail.
