Inching myself toward the mirror hung high on the wall, I stood on tiptoe in order to look at myself. The reflection put a grin on my face.

The kimono was red. Cherry bomb red. Embroidered oriental designs flitted like butterflies over the top and down the sleeves. Black satin frogs attached themselves to the front of the bodice as if marking a territorial lily pond in the silky-smooth fabric.

Uncle James had burst into our house the day before only a few hours back home from active duty in Guam. His surprise gift to me was the tiny silk kimono that perfectly fit my four-year-old bones.

I was ignorant of the war then raging in Europe and in the Pacific. I had no way of knowing that more body bags were sent from overseas than miniature silk kimonos or other souvenirs brought home to kids by those in the military.

Red silk pajamas, as light as the breast down on a wren, were ever so glamorous to my child's way of thinking. Much more so than the heavy blackout curtains that Mama lowered each time an air raid siren broke through the peace and quiet of home. Softer, too, than the wartime fabrics she sewed to make my little dresses, and a lot more fun than trying unsuccessfully each day to ride my brother's skinny, black Victory bike.

The awful World War II would be over before the end of that year. Peace treaties would be signed, reconstruction begun on a war-ravaged continent. Even so, young boys in neighborhoods all over the country would continue to play Army, strutting ramrod straight through back yards, swinging souvenir bayonets taken from dead Japanese soldiers or donning the helmets left behind by a dwindling German army.

My silk pajamas, however, were kept safe and pristine in my mahogany chest of drawers. In years to come, they would be a reminder to me that beauty is attainable, even in the midst of chaos.

My earliest years were spent listening for air raid sirens, watching Mama count out food rations, wondering who Gabriel Heater was and why he was so angry.

I ate silently (children were seen and not heard) while Mama and Daddy spoke quietly of a distant relative who had lost a leg in the war or a neighbor's son who had lost his life.

I watched from my window as my brother and his friends morphed into pint-sized soldiers yelling "Geronimo!" before mowing down the pretend enemy with pretend Tommie Guns.

When the war was over, we watched movies of men being tortured by the other side, fingernails torn out with rusty pliers, bamboo stakes driven into ears, horrors incomprehensible to any sane person.

We cringed down as far into the theater seats as possible during those movies, and then later that night experienced one nightmare after another, if we slept at all. But the very next time a war movie came to town, we went to see it. We would stand in line for however long it took, holding a quarter tightly in our sweaty palms, eager to plunk down the cost of learning how to hate.

Twenty-five cents was all it took.