Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | September/October 2005

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJIII

Circle of Love

Royal ‘ilima pakalana, from Jenny’s Leis & Flowers, one of the popular lei stands in Chinatown. Photo: Brett Uprichard

In a few minutes, I will shut down my computer and turn on my bedside lamp. The lamp is festooned with shriveled garlands of beadlike mokihana, the mystical seed capsules that grow only on Kaua‘i. These lei, acquired at least six years ago with much persistence, still emit a faint but unmistakable fragrance resembling anise. When fresh, the oil from this powerful lei causes blistering on bare skin (I still have a scar from Lei Day in elementary school). Mokihana is considered the Holy Grail among lei lovers, available during a brief spring season and found only in the remote forests of Kaua‘i. Even years old, this garland of mana continues to delight me daily.

While plant materials like mokihana are seasonal, lei-giving, thankfully, is a part of our everyday lives, a rich constant in a constantly changing world. Events such as Lei Day in the spring and Aloha Festivals in the fall may bring the lei world onto center stage, but Hawai‘i’s cultural emblem transcends seasons and events. Besides fragrance and visual beauty, each garland comes with its own evocative world of memory and emotion, qualities that outlive the lei itself. Hawai‘i Island lei maker Barbara Meheula described a lei she made years ago for a blind recipient. It was a tactile, olfactory masterpiece, multiple strands of pīkake presented in a hand-carved bamboo container. In Honolulu, Michael Miyashiro of Rainforest at the Ward Warehouse once made for a special friend’s birthday the most lavish lei I’ve ever laid eyes upon. The ti leaf pū‘olo (bundle) was ceremoniously carried to the table and unfurled to gasps of disbelief as a garland of plush Chinese peonies emerged in a cloud of perfume. The lei was a rosy pink, about six inches in diameter, with petals that were velvety and surprisingly sturdy.

There was also the consummate Hilo lei made by Sig Zane, the popular clothing designer from Hilo, of yellow lehua blossoms that he had gathered from his yard that morning. He fashioned the rare, feathery blooms into a masterpiece of a lei and flew with it to Honolulu for a special occasion that day. What he presented was more than a garland of flowers. A single strand embodied the beauty of his garden in Hilo, the thoughtfulness of his effort and preparation, and a tribute to the Pele lore (lehua was her favorite flower). It was also a marvelous confluence of serendipity and perfect timing, for yellow lehua blooms unpredictably.

When his daughter, Ann, graduated from Kapa‘a High School, Robert Hamada, the master wood turner on Kaua‘i, went deep into the forest and gathered enough materials for a five-strand, graduated lei of mokihana on a bed of small-leaved maile lauli‘i, also a Kaua‘i signature. This was the lei of a lifetime, and he was in his 70s at the time. When his daughter graduated from Mount Holyoke College four years later, he took many flower lei from Kaua‘i, a tradition that escalated when she received her master’s degree from Yale School of Drama. That’s when he arrived in cold, rainy New Haven with two lei for each of the 60 graduates, as well as for the professors, making them instantly recognizable in a sea of blue ponchos.

Twelve years ago, Hamada took some friends and me to one of his spots for maile on the slopes of Nonou, the Sleeping Giant Mountain on Kaua‘i. After gathering some maile, we spread out on our hotel veranda and made the first maile lei of our lives. I then discovered that my elderly Hawaiian teacher, my kupuna and dear friend, Nana Veary, was seriously ill in a Honolulu hospital. I flew to Honolulu with the lei in my arms and placed it around her, and it was with her when she died in hospice.

Kaua‘i was Nana’s favorite island, and decades ago she had given me the name Hi‘ilei. “It means ‘beloved child,’” she had told me. “You’ll grow into learning its other meanings.” Little did I know that the flower garland is just the beginning of a lei’s definitions. A lei is a circle of love. Hi‘ilei, “beloved child,” also denotes a mother’s love for the baby that she’s feeding, her arms wrapped around it in a circle. That circle is a lei, a powerful bond, an expression of caring and kinship.                                    

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