" It was Mother who spun the stories that made the things we studied really unforgettable.  If Dad saw motion study and teamwork in an anthill, Mother saw a highly complex civilization governed, perhaps, by a fat old queen bee who had a thousand slaves bring her breakfast in bed in the morning. If Dad stopped to explain the construction of a bridge, she would find the workman in his blue jeans eating his lunch high on top of the span. It was she would made us feel the breathless height and relative puniness of the humans who had built it. Or if Dad pointed out a tree that had been bent and gnarled, it was Mother who made us sense how the wind, beating against the tree in the endless passing of time, had made its own relentless mark."

from Cheaper by the Dozen