At the sound of our footsteps in the driveway, my father straightened on his gardening stool in the front yard and peered up from under his “Ai’Lee for Senator” baseball cap. Kam Ai’Lee had a wiry body, youthfully agile for seventy. Only his thick, wavy hair, once jet-black, belied his age, growing more salt-and-pepper each year. He was tall for a Chinese, about five foot ten. The rest of him was as Chinese as his conservative Confucian beliefs: the fair skin and high cheekbones of the northern Han, and the well-shaped muscular body, black hair, piercing dark almond eyes, and full lips of the southern Pearl River Delta men.
“Miki!” He leapt up and hugged me as if I might disappear. “You’re home at last.” Kam was a soft-spoken gentleman: gracious, elegant, with a handsome open smile. When I hugged him, his bony shoulders wore his familiar scent of sweat, earth, and sunshine.
Reginald followed behind me, effortlessly carrying both my luggage and box of ducks. “Hi Uncle Kam. Sorry I can’t stay, I’ve got to get back to the office.”
My father hugged his nephew goodbye, then turned to me. He pushed back his cap. “Come, Miki, I have your room ready.” He gestured me to follow.
My room of white eyelet curtains and bright yellow walls looked the same as the day I left for San Francisco. Rag dolls and schoolbooks, neatly dusted on low white shelves, had waited for my return. I changed to a cotton sundress and joined my father in the front yard.
I picked up a weeder, a lethal-looking pronged bar, and knelt beside him in the grass. Strange as it seemed to others, this had been our ritual since I was a child. Here, among the plants he loved, we felt most comfortable to talk and share our thoughts.
When my father bought this land, our neighborhood was considered outside the city limits. It was so quiet, neighbors swore they could hear the spirits of the dead rise from the three cemeteries on our street. Older residential areas like ours had no sidewalks. Instead, grass sloped down from the house to the paved street. Now, our neighborhood was considered almost downtown Honolulu, and our yard was a congenial stop for neighbors on their way to and from the Liliha-Pu'unui bus.
“Remember when we used to weed when you came home from work?” I asked him. In the garden, we were in our own world, hidden from the street by rows of vanda orchids on stiff green stems. I also remembered the office smell that used to cling to his suits, a mixture of paper, smoke, and air conditioning. In those days, when he came home from work he would change to shorts and a sleeveless white undershirt like those the old men wore in the back alleys of Chinatown.
“Ah, that was so long ago,” my father said. He tried to suppress the smile that said he was pleased I remembered. Widowed for seven years, he poured the energy he had once devoted to his children and his wife, Ellie, into his gardens. His soil was fragrant, dark, and rich with fat worms. Twice a day, he inspected the foliage of his tropical plants. He plucked the insects he did not like from the full and perfect leaves of the Chinese cabbage and rare herbs. He built wooden braces for the laden branches of the pomelo tree and carefully bagged the mango blossoms to protect them from the birds.
A fat earthworm wiggled free from the roots in my hand. I dug a shallow hole and carefully reburied it. “How’s Popo feeling?” I asked.
He squinted at me in the bright sun, generating a sunburst of fine lines around his eyes. “Saw her this morning. Dr. Lee ordered bed-rest but you know how stubborn your grandmother is! I told her you were coming in this morning and that you’d be up right after lunch. She’s glad you’re home.” He picked up our pace. We combed through the dirt leaving a rich dark layer of earth, and inched further along on the grass beside the flowerbeds.
