Dignity and Scorpions

Introduction by Amy Friedman, Music by Roland Tec, click below:

Patricia Lopes Harris was born and raised in Hawaiʻi. Her grandparents and great grandparents immigrated from Japan and Portugal to work in the sugar cane fields that once blanketed Maui and Kaua’i.

When I lost my job in November 2025, who did I turn to for help? My immigrant grandparents.

At first, I tried hard to get another office job, sending my résumé to company after company. Crickets.

Then a listing popped up on Indeed for a fine gardener. I didn’t really know what a fine gardener was, but I did know something about gardening.

Growing up in Hawaiʻi, I spent lots of time in the backyard with my mom. She was raised on a sugar cane plantation on Maui. Drawing on skills she probably picked up from her farmworker parents, Mom was an avid gardener.

She grew flowers, fruits, and veggies. We ate from the papaya and banana trees, and from time to time, I helped her pull ube from the earth, which she would either steam or deep fry, coated in batter, tempura-style.

These days, I live in San José, California, and raise flowers, fruits and veggies just like Mom did. Thinking I might possibly know enough to do this fine gardening job, I wrote to the hiring manager, “Will you take a chance on me?”

It worked! She invited me to an interview.

“What do you know about aesthetic pruning?” she asked.

“How about California natives?”

Very quickly, it became apparent to me that I was in over my head.

However, the real challenge turned out to be physical. I knew this would be hard, especially at the age of 57, but I thought, “I got this! I’ve run marathons. I can swim a mile. How hard could this be?”

It turned out to be much harder than anything I had ever done before and here’s why: After finishing a big race, I could rest indoors for as long as I wanted, days or months even.

Working outdoors means running a marathon one day, and then getting up the next day and doing it all over again.

As gardeners, we’re on our feet all day. We shovel and haul mulch and soil, prune and remove tons of plant debris, and climb up and down ladders, stairs, and mountain trails snaking through large properties.

After just a month or so, the job was taking a toll on me. My face burned. My arms and legs were bloodied and bruised. Pollen and dust left me wheezy. Twice, I’ve had to stop working and strip down on the street to get ants out of my pants.

My entire body ached and I was unbelievably tired. One night, as I felt myself nodding off while sitting straight up at the dinner table, I knew I needed to do something.

This is when I turned to my immigrant grandparents. My grandfathers and at least one grandmother worked in the sugar cane fields that once blanketed Hawaiʻi. Stories about this back breaking work pervaded my youth.

How the heck did they survive, especially the women? Having spent the past year doing a deep dive into my family history, my mind turned to old photos I found on the Internet of women like my grandmother working in the cane fields.

The most important thing I learned from taking a second look at those old photos was that these women weren’t going to let their predicament strip them of their dignity.

They were determined to use their ingenuity to protect themselves, to look good even, while earning money for their families.

“Get it together, girl,” they seemed to be saying to me. “We did it. So can you.”

“Just use what you already have.”

These women learned to cover themselves head to toe to protect their hair and skin from the sun, soil, and sugar cane, a monstrously large grass with leaves sharp enough to slice through skin and flesh.

They covered their head and hair with tenugui (traditional Japanese decorative cotton towels). They fashioned shibori (tie-dyed cotton fabric) into long-sleeve work shirts.

So I got to thinking, and researching. From a construction worker subreddit, I learned about 70 SPF sunscreen. I began tucking old undershirts into hiking pants, and then layering on long-sleeve t-shirts, flannels, and sometimes a jacket.

Nasal decongestant and a face covering from the pandemic left me breathing much easier. I started eating dinner early, and going to bed by 9 pm.

Though my new, grandma-inspired routine worked, I haven’t figured out everything. My finger tips tingle. I’m pretty sure I’m feeling the early stages of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Now I understand why my grandfathers, as they got older, earned so much less than their sons, according to old census records. Their bodies were breaking down. After 30 or 40 years in the field, they simply couldn’t do as much as younger men. They were worth less.

The work I’m doing is nowhere as hard as the work my grandparents did, and this is what I think about when I see farmworkers bent over lettuce in Salinas or strawberries in Watsonville, and when I look at old photos of women like my immigrant grandmothers.

These women carried their babies on their backs while they worked. Everyone was supervised by managers on horseback. There must have been a whole lot of scorpions. My mom was still talking about them when I was a kid.

My babies are all grown up. I work to the steady hum of bird song, and the critters I meet are more of the Disney variety: cute kittens, puppies, deer, opossums, and once, a skunk that looked just like Petunia from Bambi.

Though nothing will save me from the heat, especially under so much clothing, I now know why shave ice became so popular in Hawaiʻi. I dream about it, and indoor work, all day. My grandparents’ generation dreamed about indoor work too, for their kids.

All my life, I’ve wanted to really know my immigrant grandparents. None spoke English, and my grandfathers passed away before I was born.

It’s amazing it took an accident of fate—this gardening job—to bring us together.

That’s 100 years to make the connections, 100 years to learn the lessons, 100 years to get a sense of what life was like for my grandparents when they were in the prime of their lives back in the 1920s.

As hard as it has been, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything in the world.