Family Treasures

I got an envelope in the mail today from my Aunty Elaine in Honolulu, one of the last surviving members of my mother's 9 brothers and sisters. I last saw her when I was in Hawaii over the Christmas holidays. My cousins brought her to one of the shows I did at the local comedy club in Waikiki. She's in her 80's now and a bit fragile, but like all the Werners, looks half her age, and still very ladylike, soft spoken and well dressed. She mentioned then that she would send me some photos. They arrived today, along with a hand written note in careful, gently formed script on her personal note paper - "memo from Elaine Awana" printed at the top.

I had to smile when I opened the envelope. Inside was another envelope which she had originally sent, addressed simply to "Kehaulani Jackson, Woodside, Australia". It was returned to her by Australia Post for insufficient address. What's wrong with them, don't they know Kehaulani?

The photos were of my grandparents Abraham and Mary Kepa'a Werner and my great grandmother who my Aunty just called Tutu Hina. I have only one photo of my grandparents, and none of my grandma's mother, so this was a treat and a treasure. There's something compelling about looking at old photos. Holding them in your hand, they transport you to another time and place, and you think about the people in them and try to imagine being there, what they were like, and the times in which they lived. It's a physical feeling, like touching the people you see looking back at you, a time machine in a piece of paper. Digital images will never have the same magic.

My memories of my maternal grandparents are all too brief. My mother's family was large, she was 4th of 10 children, and I was born third of her four, so there was a big gap in age. By the time I was born Grandpa Werner was already 75 years old and he died when I was just seven. I had a bit more time with my grandma, since she was twenty years younger than grandpa, having married him in 1912 when she was just 2 months short of her 17th birthday.

In the photo of my grandparents together, they are standing side by side, my grandma looking very Hawaiian in a floral print dress wearing what looks like a Ni'ihau shell necklace and small corsage, her long dark hair pulled into a bun at the back. I never saw her wear it any other way. Grandpa was in shirt and tie. With his large nose and curly hair, he looked every inch the old Jewish gentleman. In the background, tree fern and palm trees. Perhaps they were at a wedding, there's no date on the photo to place it. I can't help looking at this image and thinking, how did my Hawaiian grandmother born on the island of Maui just two years after Queen Liliuokalani was deposed by American businessmen come to marry this man from La Salle, Illinois? I know grandpa came to Hawaii as a soldier in the US Army, but how ever did they meet and marry, much less create a family of 8 daughters and 2 sons? How different could they have been?

There is another photo of my grandmother, a studio shot, when she was perhaps sixty or so. It's hard to tell an actual age with her. Her complexion was always smoothe, no wrinkles. But her face had filled out more, and her hair was graying but not completely white. She was never a lively, talkative woman, and her quiet smile makes her seem serene yet quite forceful at the same time. Perhaps raising ten children in tough times as she did, you didn't have time for a lot of nonsense. She worked hard, and she was always organized, neat, and managed to seem quite elegant at all times even though the Werners were not well off in the least. She was a fastidious housekeeper. She cooked, sewed, crocheted, knitted; she was a talented baker and kept a tidy garden. She always had something for us when we went to visit - fresh baked gingerbread, a ripe guava or mango from one of her fruit trees. I'm sure she would be appalled at my lack of domestic talent.

In a photo of my grandmother as a child of about 8 or 10 with her brother John, they stand on either side of their mother. The poignant thing about this photo is my Aunty's note that both my grandma and her brother were what the westerners would call "illegitimate" having been conceived not by my great grandmother's husband. But in Hawaiian tradition, these children were loved and accepted as full members of their families, without shame attached, and they bore the Kepa'a name. I love thinking about this concept because it still applies in modern Hawaii. Indeed, it applied in my immediate family as my younger sister and I both have fathers who were not my mother's husband. Yet my dad (not my biological father who I always refer to as "the sperm donor") loved and raised us as his own, being the only father we knew and loved.

Receiving these photos from my Aunty sent me to the old photo albums to see more pictures of my extended family. Looking at children's faces who I know now as adults, seeing black and white photos of house parties filled with smiling relatives no longer with us, my parents who have both passed still in the bloom of youth, my older brother and sister in blue jeans as teenagers in the 1950's, work mates in the office, weddings and christenings and trips to the beach, old houses and views of buildings in downtown Honolulu long demolished. Old friends and new, generations on parade. What a treasure.

Memories are precious, like these old photographs, and need to be kept, reviewed and passed along. I am sending my Aunty a thank you note, but no words can really express how grateful I am that she sent these little treasures to me.