Portrait by one feature: shoulders

He's a short man, made to look shorter by the disproportionate breadth of his shoulders.  They nearly ended his life before he had a chance to draw breath -a struggle for him and Mother to achieve his birth, both battered and bruised.

Those shoulders powered kayaks through white water, hockey balls into the net, sometimes knuckles into faces. I learned their breadth most accurately, making custom-fit shirts short enough, lean through the torso, with room for the bulky deltoid and trapezius muscles.

That frame gives him the posture of a fighter, of a man who carries the world on  his broad, broad shoulders.