"In the dim twilight, I often see pairs of Canada geese on the grass near the parking lot.... Today there are three couples. One of the females is eating grass, and her mate is a few feet away, keeping a vigil, on the lookout for any danger. I watched their interaction. It is minimal in its movements but intense in its awareness, one of the other. When one makes an adjustment, the other notices and immediately makes a compensatory shift. To an insensitive eye, these changes in direction of the body, of the head, might seem random, but I know differently, for this is a couple mated for life, and I had mated for life and had known and experienced as one does when one knows that the marriage is for life that the shifts and gestures need only be small. The intimacy of the relationship becomes this fine essence, a distillation of the earlier passion, but just as powerful. In the marriage that endures, there is no need for grandiosity."
(Sandy Broyard, Standby)
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