Full Cicada Moon

In “Crocuses in the Snow,” Papa and Mimi come home to find Mama standing outside and staring at a purple flower piercing the snow. Mama explains that it is a crocus, and that whoever used to live there planted a bulb. Mimi wonders if those people hoped to see the flower or planted it just for them. Mimi realizes that even though it seems everything stops moving in winter, secret things still happen below the surface that make their way out when the time is right. In “Kimono,” Mama opens a package from Auntie Sachi with Mimi. Inside the package, a length of blue silk is underneath tissue paper. A note tells Mama that she never treats herself, so this silk is for a kimono for spring.

In “Relocation,” Mimi is in history class. A boy named David shares that his uncle was killed at Pearl Harbor. He thinks it was a good thing they bombed the Japanese to end the war. When the teacher asks what the class thinks, Mimi wishes she could share what she heard from Auntie Sachi, that good guys don’t always do good things. When the teacher asks Mimi what she thinks because her family is Japanese, she mentions the relocation camps where Japanese Americans had to live in camps in the desert until the war was over.