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..