Memory and Mom

Dad took this photo of Mom at Kahana Bay on their last road trip around the island before he passed away.  I don't believe that this was taken in July of 1973.  Dad passed on July 18, 1973.  He had been taken by ambulance from our home earlier that month.  He could no longer walk and Mom couldn't lift him to care for him.

He was admitted to Saint Francis Hospital where he died.

Still, I am sure that he took this picture of Mom when he was still able to travel with her around the island and that in her memory, this was how he would remember her.

Mom and Grandma One Year After

I haven't posted in more than a year. There were certainly things to write about. But should I? We are all still reeling or recovering, in our own ways, from my mother's sudden death last year just before her 85th birthday. I know I've told people how beautiful she was when she died. She was lovely.

I have her high school graduation picture taken in 1949. Time reversed on that awful day and made her look young and full of the promise she must have felt when that picture was taken.  I've been bedside at a few deathbeds. Death is terrible to look on. The mouth gapes open, the eyes are wide open not closed. Fluids dribble from the mouth. Shudders shake the body.

None of this happened with my mother.

The evidence of the major stroke she'd suffered was erased by a kindly hand. Her face was youthful and lovely. Her hair black and wavy, moved gently away from her face. She had rolled to her side and faced the window as the sun rose over a clear morning. It shone on her face, as if she would open her eyes and see it. She looked, to reuse an overused expression, just as if she were sleeping and would soon wake.
 

Yet, I'd seen her sleeping while she was alive. Her lips were usually pursed and she frowned, forehead scrunched as if she contemplated something in sleep that she didn't particularly like. I'm not going to write much more on this; there's little more that needs to be said by me. I will post pictures here for the family to view and share and remember Mom in their own ways.

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The Ironing Board

I have my mother's ironing board.

It was her mother’s ironing board which was passed on to me probably because no one wanted it or liked it. It’s not new. It’s not very tall when completely unfolded and latched into place. It’s made of wood—I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wooden ironing board anywhere, except behind the door of my bedroom.

It still has the cover my mother put on it to hold the original padding in place. The cover that came with it when my grandmother had it is long gone. I put another cover over my mother’s padding almost thirty years ago.

I had not needed to use it in years but we kept it because throwing it out in the trash was unthinkable. It survived several moves, from one house to another, from our last apartment to this one. I don’t usually iron anything either because my husband and daughter do a better job. I’m usually shooed out of the way, gently most often, and told that others will iron for me.

I’m glad no one was around to do that this time because I got to iron my own dress. It looks okay.

As I waited for the iron to heat-a memory that was almost forgotten visited me.

As a young girl, I loved to watch my mother iron. There were Sunday traditions that I kept until I was in high school. Some were traditions the whole family observed: eating Sunday dinner , watching the Ed Sullivan show and the Wonderful World of Disney. But there was one that I kept because it meant I could spend time with my mother, lying on my parents’ bed and watch her iron our uniforms, our father’s shirts and handkerchiefs for the coming week.

We were in a Catholic grade school. My sister and I wore pleated jumpers, starched, short sleeved white blouses and a ribbon tie, worn like a bow, under the Peter Pan collar of our blouses. My brother wore a short sleeved white shirt, navy blue tie and navy blue pants. All of that needed to be ironed so that we could wear them to school on Monday morning.

My father, as befit a young businessman working in downtown Honolulu is those days wore a suit with long sleeved white shirts, a tie and, of course, he needed white, pressed handkerchiefs.
Our house was larger than many homes I’d visited so my mother could have done this task in the kitchen or the living room. There was no laundry room.

She chose to iron in their bedroom, my parent’s bedroom. She used the wooden ironing board I now have. It was just the right height for her. It creaked as she pressed hard to get the blouses and shirts stiff with starch and shiny with heat, wrinkle-free until we put them on in the morning.

Watching her I learned to use a damp handkerchief to get pleats to lay flat and crisp. I learned that a ribbon bow tie looks better if it’s ironed and that spray starch can make any shirt look almost new before a child put it on in the morning.

I used to like lying on my parents’ bed, watching my mother iron. It’s something I can remember now but not without tears for a time long gone and my mother who passed, taking so many memories with her, just a short time ago.

I want her back. But the price she would have paid to stay, paralyzed on one side of her body, unable to speak, unable to be independent and mobile, needing a feeding tube to stay alive...she wanted us to let her go. She had made it clear that she didn’t want anything done to prolong a life she did not want.

I guess the mother I want back is the strong, indomitable, stubborn woman who lived life on her own terms. I miss her terribly and the tears come when I look at her ironing board, standing behind my bedroom door.

Unwritten

There are stories that I want to write but I am stymied by what I want to say.  I tried an idea on my youngest son the other day.  The reaction was not one I anticipated and so now I am at more of a loss.  I don't want to place blame on the dead who can no longer defend themselves nor do I want to paint everything as the rosy picture it wasn't.  I guess I have to wait a bit and "stew" in my literary juices until I can figure out the right approach.  Whatever I decide to write and however it gets written, well--that can wait a bit.  It has waited all this time.

by the sea by the beautiful sea

Lei Makers

(A portion of this was previously published in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.)
I used to live in a three bedroom, ground floor apartment with a hidden treasure-a tiny backyard. In that pocket-sized backyard grew huge green ti-leaf that I wove into lei for my older children when they left for college, tangerines and the sweetest ginger. But my daughter, that enterprising farmer, had planted plumeria. I don’t know where she got it from or if the plumeria still grow in that back yard, but as with all things remembered, I can retrieve the memory of stringing a lei there from flowers harvested from that tiny tree.

Stringing it was easy. Pick a flower, push the sewing needle through the middle, and push it down the thread. The lei needles that had been family treasures were long gone. I was using with a regular mending needle and thread from a sewing kit.

I was making it for my father's grave at Punchbowl. I wasn't paying attention to the lei-making and poked my finger with the needle.

Somehow, I always managed to poke at least one finger with the needle.

It wasn't much different from the first lei I made as a kid at my auntie’s house at 'Alewa Heights.

My auntie "played music". She played the upright bass every Friday and Saturday night for the Halekulani Girls back in the late fifties and sixties. She wore bright red or vibrant green or luminous blue holoku. Whenever she played music, she needed several strands of holoku-length plumeria to match. Store-bought lei were only for very special occasions, not for work.

My older cousin and the three of us "ukus" were the flower pickers and lei makers for my auntie.
There were at least five plumeria trees growing in the back yard but only certain kinds made the leis my auntie would use. There was a bright yellow plumeria with a delicate pink outline that she loved. I hated it because it was the hardest to sew into a lei. The flowers were round, tiny and had a crooked stem. I couldn't get the needle through the exact center and poked my finger almost every time I strung a flower.

There was an orange and red plumeria with a scent that I still love. Its long spidery petals were easier for my five year old hands to handle. I liked making that lei. We didn't use those flowers often because they always clashed with my auntie’s holoku unless she wore what I called the "gold" holoku. It was probably a metallic yellow but to me it looked like molten gold on her.

The flower we used most often for my auntie’s lei were the sturdy white plumeria with the yellow center. These were the easiest to sew but the most difficult to get. We only had one tree of this plumeria in the backyard. To get more, we had to go and visit our grandma's friend, Auntie Anna.

Auntie Anna's tree was huge. Its gnarled and knobby trunk was strong enough to support an adult climbing its branches. It spread out like a thick, green and white umbrella that covered Auntie Anna's tiny yard. Under its shadow no daylight penetrated. There were scary things living there. Giant lizards ran up and down the trunk and blew their big red throats at you. Huge cockroaches rustled under the dead leaves and flowers scattered on the ground.

Worst of all, spiders lurked on cobwebs that clung to your hair and stuck to your clothes. They looked mean. We knew that they could bite.

We were afraid of the spiders but we didn't dare face our auntie without the leis she needed.

We conducted flower picking raids under that old plumeria tree. One by one we would dart in, climb the branches, pick as many flowers as we dared as close to the spider web as we dared. When a leaf rustled or a lizard slithered past the flower picker would jump, scream and run out. Then it was someone else's turn.

With three little kids and their teenage cousin, this process took nearly all afternoon. The spiders probably dreaded our incursions into their serene, quiet territory more than we feared sneaking onto their turf.

Leis for my auntie had to look "full". To get that thick, full look with plumeria we needed to pinch off the "okole" of the flowers and push them close together. This required a LOT of flowers. We had to pick three to four big shopping-sized paper bags full of flowers to make two, thick, single-strand holoku length leis.

I remember sitting on the floor of my auntie’s house, surrounded by newspaper, a small mountain of plumeria in front of me. My cousin sat nearby on her own island of newspaper with her own pile of flowers. My brother and sister, deemed too young to be trusted with the lei needles, sorted the flowers by size and pinched off their "okoles" for us.

The lei needles were huge for my clumsy kid-sized hands. The flowers and string were sticky with sap. I didn't dare try to rub the sap on my clothes. I envied my cousin who could push three or four flowers onto the needle at a time. Her lei was finished quickly. My lei seemed to take forever.

Long after my brother and sister had finished sorting the flowers, pinching off the ends and had washed their hands clean of sap, I was still stringing my lei.

When I finally finished the lei my auntie would walk through the door, dressed in her holoku. My uncle was right behind her, balancing her upright bass on its spindle.

"Pau, baby?" She would ask.

"Yes!"

My cousin took my lei and hers and put them around her mama's neck. My uncle hefted the big bass and with the scent of plumeria and the swish of a satin holoku, she was gone.

My brother and sister live on the mainland. Our dad and his sister, the auntie we made the lei for, were far too young when they left us. My aunty's house belongs to my younger cousins who were babies when she passed away and don't remember her music-playing days except through the memories of their mother and me.

I don't know if the plumeria still grow in their backyard as it did in that tiny yard behind the old apartment. Since I moved, more than a decade ago, the crooked, tiny plumeria shrub is probably gone. At twilight I know that somewhere plumeria release their delicate scent. When I remember that haunting fragrance I can be with the family I miss at a home that exists only in memory..

family and friends

blogger slideshow, a set on Flickr.