Remembering My Grandfather

To this day, Grandfather remains a figure of mystery

- Tom Laver

My grandfather John Thomas Laver stood five feet four inches tall, just like his father, like my father and now me. But at five years of age when I wasn’t yet that height, he scared me. He was a quiet, private man who, as they say, kept himself to himself. One morning, I found him seated alone at a table in an old wooden shed attached to the kitchen, having his breakfast, drinking tea. In hindsight, the tea part wasn’t unusual. He was born in England. But it was how he was drinking it that I remember thinking was odd. He poured it from his cup into his saucer and then drank it from the saucer—like a cat lapping milk from its dish. When I stared at him, deep in his own thoughts, he looked up at me only for a second, said nothing, and continued to sip his tea.