Awww, speaking of reparations ....
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Freshly baked, one hopes
Soldiers from U.S. Army Garrison Italy returned a birthday cake to Meri Mion Thursday - 77 years after American troops fighting near Vicenza ate the cake made for her thirteenth birthday. Mion, 89, of Vicenza, was the guest of honor at the midday event, held together with Vicenza officials at Giardini Salvi, very close to where the 88th Infantry Division fought its way into the city on April 28, 1945.
….
It was raining and thunder the morning when 88th Infantry Division Soldiers battled German defenders. At least 19 U.S. Soldiers were killed or wounded. Other Americans, from the 91st Infantry Division, drove north from the Riviera Berica into the city. Later, they paraded through Corso Palladio, Vicenza's famous thoroughfare, where Italians offered them bread and wine. Mion, 89, of Vicenza, was a 13-year-old when Americans came to her nearby village, San Pietro in Gų. She spent the night hiding with her mother in the attic of their farm along the main road of town. Retreating Germans fired shots near her house, memories that haunted her for years afterward. She awoke the next morning, Americans were nearby. Her mother prepared a birthday cake for her. Fresh from the oven, the cake went to the window sill.
(And the soldiers did what you might expect young, hungry soldiers to do: they ate it.)
Mion thanked the Americans for remembering her and replacing her cake all these years later. She turns 90 on April 29. This year, she will take the cake home to share with loved ones, she said. "Tomorrow, we will eat that desert with all my family remembering this wonderful day that I will never forget" Mion said.
This is a story that’s dear to my heart because some years ago, to mark my graduation from Tiny Tots, my mother baked a spice cake, my favorite, to celebrate the occasion. I had exactly one slice — delicious! Just what a four-year-old could appreciate — and the rest was put away, to await my return from spending the night with Mrs. Carlson, our elderly “linen maid” my father had kept on as a sort of retainer for decades (I think she have worked for his parents, pre-war, and even been his nursemaid back around 1905). Off I went for a grand adventure spending the night in Mrs. Carlson’s New Rochelle apartment, but when I returned, I discovered that my black-hearted brothers had eaten the entire cake; they were the only crumbs left.
My mother made me another, and did so for every birthday thereafter — the joke [sic] continued well into my 20s — but I am still waiting for an apology from my older brother and Ants (and maybe Gideon, though I suppose he was just six-moths-old at the time, and may be entitled to a pass on this one), and some recognition of the trauma they put me through.
Sniff.
