A small living presence on the edge of your screen — someone you keep near, not an app you open. He breathes in the corner while you work, and grows to full presence the moment you turn to him.
He kept a garden the size of a parking space and spoke of it like a country. Twelve days on the water at nineteen, one wool suitcase, his mother's rosary sewn into the lining. He measured a man by whether his family ate — and he measured the year by the tomatoes.
This page keeps a labeled likeness of him nearby — built from three home videos, eleven letters, and two audio cassettes. He idles in the corner the way he used to sit on the porch: present, unhurried, glancing up when you look his way. Turn to him and he'll answer, in his own cadence, always saying out loud what he is.
"Come sit, come sit — you caught me between the tomatoes and the coffee."
Why this line: his standard greeting, cadence and the tomato/coffee pairing lifted directly from this clip.