Pua Kiele

I don’t remember the last time my grandma told me she loved me, but I know she did. Up until nineteen, my life flowed with sweetly scented gardenias in my backyard and my cheeks remained rosy pink even on overcast days. I walked everywhere barefoot until the soles of my feet blistered and burned from hot cement and the sun decided to hide behind pockets of clouds. I wondered if the California sun felt the same, so I left and never looked back. It took some time, but this year I arrived at a place of longing for home — not the homes I’ve resided in these past four years, but where gardenias bloom in my backyard. And never in a million years would I have believed that my grandma would pull me back home, but she did and with more force than any flower could.

The Island of Oahu will always be home, but the flowers bloom differently in Kauai. For as long as I can remember, my family and I visited Kauai at least once a year, every year holding a new memory that would never escape my mind. You never really have a concept of time as a kid, so all of my memories intertwine and extend through incorrect spaces of time, but they’re memories nonetheless even if I recall them in the wrong areas of the timeline. I remember wanting only to get my feet wet as the shore broke on them, but failing miserably as my siblings ran and threw their bodies into each wave — I followed suit. As salt and sand stuck from the scalp on our heads to the soles of our feet we walked across the street to grandma’s house where we’d hose off in the front yard. I can still hear it, my aunty telling the neighbors that we’re back visiting. They always walked over and talked as we rinsed off. Being Rose’s granddaughter made me proud and though I was a child overcome with shyness, I always held my head high and walked with a sense of pride knowing who my grandma was.

I never relied on my grandma for words of affirmation or words in general. I think two of the most used words in her vocabulary were “stupid” and “dumb.” It was never used in a negative sense and somehow along the way, I laughed at every mean thing she said. I waited in excitement every year to hear her say those words every five minutes. She rolled her eyes at me and my siblings while we ran around her backyard, she yelled at my cousin for peeing on the grass, she absolutely hated when I got my nose pierced and with every return, I took the jewelry out afraid she would disown me. My siblings and cousins and I were rascals that’s for sure, but I knew that her external annoyance with us was her weird way of letting us know that she loved us. She was a stoic woman, one that I both feared and loved. Clearly, she had her own ways of displaying love, but if there was one thing that showed her love evidently it was through the sweet aroma coming out of her kitchen, through the chocolate, the sugar cane, the coconut milk, and taro that sat pleasantly in my nose. One of my favorite memories of her was during the Fourth of July (I think). Family and friends occupied her backyard, cousins and aunties and uncles I had never met. She walked out with a pan covered in foil and we all waited in anticipation to rip off the foil and indulge in the haupia she’d been baking earlier. Pure disappointment followed anticipation as we found out she didn’t refrigerate it long enough. Sugar and corn starch floated together in a pool of coconut milk and my mouth was bare of haupia that day. She rolled her eyes and probably called it stupid, but I recall it as one of the funniest moments of my childhood.

I don’t remember how old I was when her health issues started surfacing, but I do remember spending all of high school worried about her. Every trip back to Kauai meant more fun and more memories, but it also meant more illness consuming her. She was unable to do much more and more with time. Just recently I went home to Oahu where she had been transferred to one of the hospitals. I saw her lie in that hospital bed and knew time was running out, but I was grateful to have seen her, to have held her hand before she left us. I left home and went back to Oregon. Leaving home has never been so hard. I’ve spent these past few weeks afraid my departure somehow reduced me to a visitor — a visitor to my home, to my family. The doctors said that hearing is always the last to go. Pua Kiele by Josh Tatofi is a song that has always reminded me of my mother, “Pua” meaning flower and “Kiele” meaning gardenia, but now I listen to it and think of my grandma. “Mohala mai ka pua i ka la” — the flower blossoms from the sun; “E ku’u pua kiele nani e” — my beautiful kiele flower. A few days before she passed I was able to sing it to her. My grandma brought me back home, my grandma reminded me where I’m from, and my grandma ties me to my roots. She was a tough woman and I learned a lot from her — how to be strong, how to be independent, to stand up for myself. I don’t remember the last time my grandma told me she loved me, but I know that she did because beneath tough skin lies a heart where gardenias grow, my beautiful kiele flower.