He entered the house, puffing and dragging his feet. His knit hat sat squarely atop his bald head, much like the leafy crown of the unripe persimmons in the yard. He had pulled his socks over his trousers up to his knees, and one hem of his shirt peeked out from beneath his cardigan. He sank into a chair, his gaze lingering for a moment on the bowl of mixed nuts on the table. He narrowed his eyes with the intense scrutiny of one trying to pluck a single hair from a bowl of yogurt. Scooping up a handful of nuts, he tossed them all into his mouth at once. Deaf to my mother's warning, "Dad, the nuts are salty, your blood pressure will spike", he fixed his stare on the opposite wall. It was like speaking to a stone statue, save for the rhythmic rise and fall of the skin on his face as he chewed. Once the grinding and swallowing of the nuts was complete, he glanced at his wristwatch, the very watch that, for as long as I could remember, had seemed a permanent fixture on Grandpa’s wrist. My eyes fell upon his frail hands. The wrinkles on his hands spoke volumes; they possessed a voice. The rustle of harvesting rice sheaves, the stifling hum of August’s humid heat, the crack of bones freezing in the snow, the sound of being a man, the sound of suffering... He reached for his tattered prayer book, its torn pages reconciled time and time again with tape. He began to recite. Had anyone been standing outside, they would have thought a lamentation ceremony was being held within. His supplications finished, he donned his black suit, faded to grey from years of relentless wear. The deep folds gathered at the waist of his trousers betrayed his frailty. He slipped into his shoes, their leather patterned with dried specks of mud. As he reached the persimmon tree, a fruit slipped from its branch and fell to the ground. He bent down, picked up the persimmon, and rubbed it against the sleeve of his coat, as if to soothe the ache of its fall. He slammed the door behind him, as he always did, with the force of a destructive gale, and was gone. Now, the persimmons in the yard are ripe; their little hats, too, sit squarely atop their heads. The knit hat, however, washed and folded, rests quietly in the bottom drawer of the closet.