Twenty years ago this evening I was a relatively new mother, walking my colicky baby around the livingroom until it was late enough in the day for a warm bath to take effect.

Tears streamed down my cheeks.

They weren't because I was tired, or wished the colicky period would pass.

They were tears of joy, because the Germans had broken through the Berlin Wall.

I had seen the Wall. I had been on both sides of it. I had seen the ruins that remained in the East. Important reminders about not repeating the past, they also spoke of a lack of resources.

I had been under the Wall, riding the subway from West to West by passing underneath the East, where armed guards stood in the shadows of closed subway stops, stops marked with their original signs--Alexanderplatz, Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Platz.

I had gone through Checkpoint Charlie. I had seen the border guard pause as he compared my companion's passport photo with her face, the tension only broken when she explained the difference in hairstyle as a Dauerwelle (permanent), and then his quick flash of smile, as much for the ease of her German (not English) as anything else, I suspect.

The Wall, and the government that erected it, have left their scars, as did the war--even if the ruins have all finally been cleared. 

Today, though, as I did 20 years ago, I find myself with tears on my cheeks, because of the power of people, when they work for good, and because, at least in one part of the world, a whole generation has grown up not knowing what it means to live in a divided country.

There's more to say, but I won't. Instead, I'll quote Robert Frost: "Something there is that doesn't like a wall."