The unintended consequence of a drunken tryst between a married Japanese man and a Jewish college student, Mimi was placed in the care of nuns in a Roman convent. Allergic to religious indoctrination and eager to explore the world, she traveled to Washington D.C., where she was adopted by a secular couple who loved her more than if she had been their own. 

During childhood summers in a sleepy village in the south of France, she divided the hottest hours of the day between the library of the 16th century stone house her parents had rented, reading every book at least once, and the cool basement of an abandoned building occupied by the village fou, who peppered her with questions about the United States as if it were another planet, such as “Avez-vous des bougies là-bas?” 

Variously called an Ori-yenta, a Jap squared, and an exotic Eurasian, Mimi was recruited as a model, which brought her to New York, where she felt at home for the first time. A chance encounter with a former neighbor led to a reunion with her birth mother, who never again saw the man who had impregnated her. Mimi met him when she was working for a Tokyo newspaper. He remarked that she has "Uncle Hajime’s eyes" and sent her camellias on her birthday.

She is grateful to all her parents for making her life possible.  She shudders to think what she would do without it.