Leimamo’s Life

As children, we visited Kaua’i every summer to help my grandma in the taro patches. For me, it was great to just be able to spend time with her. For my brothers, it meant mudfights. I used to get muddy too, until my darling brother (Bobby) told me those long snakelike looking things were really frog eggs. That was the last time I set foot into the taro patch but I still went with them everyday.

My grandma lived on O’ahu but she tended to the patches on Kaua’i more than she spent on O’ahu and summertime was when I got to spend alot of time with her. I looked forward to summers. She stayed in a little shack that had a little kitchen area, basically enough room for a shelf, a two-burner and a sink. There was a little general store just a few feet away where we shopped for eggs and bread everyday. My grandma didn’t have a fridge so we basically lived on tuna, eggs, O’opu, rice and poi.

One day, I volunteered to help her fix lunch and I boiled some eggs for devil egg sandwiches. I knew that I was supposed to add salt, but what I didn’t know was the salt box was very flimsy and it spilled more salt than I needed. I didn’t think it would make that big a difference in the taste so I continued to mix the eggs and made the sandwiches. I was so proud of my work until everyone said it tasted like crap. Right there was a clue for me to stay out of the kitchen and leave the cooking to those who can cook.

After taking our lunch breaks, we’d trek it back to the patches to finish the day’s work. We loved when it was pau hana, that meant we could go swimming in the river. The water was always freezing cold but that didn’t stop us from jumping in it and following it down the path. Grandma didn’t know how to swim so she’d always be nervous and overprotective. We’d gather pipipi from the rocks and after dinner, grandma would boil them for us and we each had a safety pin to use for digging out the teeny weeny piece of meat. It was worth the work.

O’opu - I haven’t had it since my last summer in the patches, some 30 years ago. We’d sit on the bridge with real bamboo fishing poles with worms for bait. Sometimes we’d catch but not very often. My first and last experience at a hukilau was on Kaua’i too. It’s an experience I’ll never forget and unfortunately will never see again. There were so many people there, all helping to remove the fishes from the nets. Everyone laughing and talking story while they worked; People taking home only what they needed to feed their families; no one taking more than they needed. It was a time when people weren’t so greedy and hungered for money.

The shack didn’t have a bathroom so we all had to find a “spot” out back to do our business. I remember telling my grandma that people passing by in cars will be able to see the white toilet paper floating on top of the overgrown weeds. For our baths, sometimes we drove to a fresh water pond located at the foot of a waterfall (which we called the queen’s bath). Tourist would pass by and take pictures of us bathing there. One year, my mom flew to Kaua’i and showed us how to break the ginger so we could use the sap for shampoo. Paul Mitchell knows all about Awapuhi shampoo, he makes money with it. When we didn’t drive to the queen’s bath, we had a waterhose running from the kitchen sink, out the back door to a makeshift showerstall that my grand uncle built for us girls. And let me remind you, there was no hot water.

My grandma left me with so many happy experiences to remember and tales to pass on to my grandchildren. It’s weird how my own kids aren’t that interested but I know my grandchildren will be interested to know how my childhood was in the old days and I look forward to reliving them through my stories.