When my grandfather came over one day for breakfast, all I had in the cupboard to offer him for a breakfast beverage was tea. This won a terribly huge scowl from him, but nothing verbal, much to my relief.

He had been a lumberjack in the old days, and was now a high-end scrap-iron junkyard-dog rustic, one of those barrel-chested Paul Bunyan types—the local counterpart could be Fernando Poe Jr.’s Panday or the old comic-book Captain Barbell. He could bend wrought iron sheets as easily as if it were clay. Last time I checked, he could still rip those sheets into two.

But it didn’t end there, no. He took gender issues quite seriously and was convinced that male and female stereotypes should be firmly upheld by both sexes. If a male, say I, were to display “soft” qualities such as proper dining, fancy dressing, or even the simple act of drinking tea, it would be reason enough for a lecture. And did he ever yell out his lectures. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he were like any other old man with calcium deficiency and a weak voice, but no—my grandfather had the baritone of a buzz saw and the strength of a grizzly bear. And he liked to emphasize his points by breaking things. Like chairs, flowerpots, and cutlery. I was very nervous that day.

I prepared a feast for him, maybe a little bit too extravagant a repast, but then I was trying to make up for the looming disaster. I’d prepared heaps of bacon, mountains of garlic fried rice, and leftover embotido with sunny-side up eggs and atchara for flavor. If this didn’t win him over, I was a dead man.

“Good spread,” he approved grudgingly, which was unfortunately followed by a lucid and wet-sounding snort when he sniffed at his Japanese green tea. “Give me the sugar.”

Wonder of wonders! He didn’t go berserk, even after smelling the tea. I dared to breathe a sigh of relief, but that proved short-lived as I realized that he was spooning in the sugar with abandon. “Gramps, you won’t want to put more than half a teaspoonful there,” I cautioned.

“Oh, hush, boy. I’ll say when only when I think I’ve had enough.” Spoonful after spoonful went in, and I could almost feel 8.5

“Bah. Nothing could ruin this blasted cup of colored water. If you had some real coffee in this hell’s kitchen…”

“Well, no, I don’t, unfortunately. Sorry.”

He grunted. “More’s the pity.” He had finally finished with the sugar and placed the teaspoon back into the sugar jar haphazardly. It was the moment of truth.

The momentous swig of a lumberjack. Long, deep, and earthy was the rumbling of his throat and bowels, like the earth as early man stepped out from a broken bamboo and surveyed the world before him—and yawned. I saw juice drip from a heavy salt-and-pepper beard onto plaid shirts with sweat-stained undershirts sticking out from the top button. My heart skipped two minutes’ worth of beats, and I felt my hair standing on end. If I paid attention to what was happening to me, I probably would have noticed my teeth chattering. A maelstrom of chairs and table legs filled my mind, the soon-to-be wreckage that used to be my house.