Auntie's Sewing Machine

My auntie has had the same sewing machine since 1978. She's made aloha shirts, wedding dresses, quilts and costumes for every hula show at our church. This spring, she turned it into a cloth face covering factory.

She set up in her carport, with the radio playing old Hawaiian music, and asked me to help. I cut fabric. She sewed. We used every scrap of bright fabric she'd saved over forty years: hibiscus prints, turtle prints, ukulele prints and one bolt of fabric covered with tiny pineapples.

People came from all over the island to pick them up from a basket on her fence. Grocery clerks. Bus drivers. Kids. Old uncles who wanted "the one with the fish." She gave them away for free and refused to take money.

By the end of May, we'd made six hundred and twelve. I've never spent so much time with her. She told me stories about her childhood on the plantation, about my mother as a little girl, about her first husband, who couldn't dance. I wouldn't trade those weeks for anything.