Five minutes more and the baby would have been born on horseback. It was August 12, 1892, and Caroline Swain had ridden some 30 miles from Papaaloa to Honokaa, to give birth in the home of her brother John Kanakaoluna and his wife. The child had been promised to them, to hanai . . . adopt, in the old way . . . for John and his wife had no children, and his sister had several.
They called her Ku'uleialohapoina'ole\" my beloved, unforgettable lei. Hawaiian style, she always knew and often visited her real mother, brothers and sisters. In that home she began to learn music and hula . . . her mother was a noted singer and dance . . . even steel guitar, then a very new thing . . . probably the first girl to do so. At both homes, she spoke only Hawaiian.
School was miles away. Students started walking before sunrise. The waters of the spring at Laupahoehoe where they stopped to drink are still sweet. The teacher who couldn't pronounce her name, called her Alice, after an older cousin who brought her to class the first day. Sometimes the trip home was faster, if they took forbidden and dangerous rides on the can bundles in the flume stilted high above the cliffs and coves of Hawaii's Hamakua coast.
In 1901, the family moved to Honolulu. Alice was sent to help a cousin, and before she was in her teens, she was taking full charge of that household: cooking, laundry, cleaning, sewing, tending the babies, the stock and the garden . . .while keeping up her grades too. Classmates at Kaiulani School included Eleanor Prendergast and her sisters, the Desha and Dwight children.
Alice remembers fondly the home of her uncle and aunt, Abe and Minerva Fernandez, in Kalihi. They always asked her to come when they expected a visit from the Queen, because Liliuokalani loved the way Alice prepared Hawaiian food, massaged her and sang to her. Auntie treasures beautiful mementos given to her by the Queen.
