Three years ago, we had the great pleasure of hosting Emma, a 16-year-old young woman from Magdeburg, Germany, who decided to attend a year of high school here in the United States. Emma was in the same class and on the school swim team with our daughter Celeste, and when Emma's initial family placement did not work out for logistical reasons (taking high school swimmers to practice at 4:45 a.m. every morning isn't feasible for everyone), she became our adopted daughter for the rest of the academic year.
What a joy that was!
Emma's English is perfect, and this no doubt facilitated her transition to life in America. But more than anything else, it was her adaptability and curiosity, her joie de vivre, her love of all things American, and her sense of humor that made her such a wonderful addition to our family. When she returned home in June 2022, we all missed her terribly but promised that Celeste would visit as soon as both their schedules permitted.
Last month, Celeste finally got her trip to Germany and spent a week with Emma and her family. In addition to enjoying the sights and rich history of Magdeburg, Celeste visited the cities of Braunschweig and charming Wernigerode and spent a day touring Berlin, less than two hours away from Emma's hometown.
How different things are now compared to when I was Celeste's age!
Emma's family lives in what used to be East Germany, a separate, communist country de facto controlled by the former Soviet Union. Until the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was difficult for Americans to travel there -- or to the eastern side of the city of Berlin -- and nearly impossible for East Germans to leave. As with the Soviet Union, North Vietnam, and Cuba, East Germany was America's "enemy," or so we were told.
Our experiences with Emma and her loving, generous family reinforce how absurd a notion that always was.
Emma's parents do not speak much English, and my husband and I might know 100 words of German between us. But we have always been able to correspond regularly (thank you, Google Translate and WhatsApp!), and what has struck me most about our exchanges is the universality of our feelings for our children. On the day Celeste flew home, while my husband and I waited at O'Hare International Airport for her to get through customs, I received a message from Emma's mother. She wrote:
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"Dear Laura:
"Now (the plane has landed), and Celeste is with you again. I can still see her waving one last time and thought of what it was like (for you) with Emma two years ago. ... Celeste is intelligent, curious, and beautiful ... and we were very happy to meet her. Even though we couldn't speak to each other fluently, we still got to know each other. ... We wish you and your family health and well-being. Maybe we'll see each other again someday. Until then, greetings ..."
I was so moved by this. Emma's family so graciously hosted our daughter, driving nearly two hours to and from the Berlin airport (twice!), making home-cooked meals, taking her on tours of local attractions, and generally making her feel welcome and cared for so far away from home. Despite the brevity of Celeste's visit, Emma's mother understood exactly how we felt when it was time for their daughter to leave America and return to Germany.
In the face of these shared experiences and simple kindnesses, the decades of hostility between the U.S. and countries in the former Soviet bloc seem inexplicable. What cause did Americans have to hate those people, or they us?
What should this tell us about other nations with whom we are "at war"?
I saw a quote on X/Twitter this week which said, "War is a place where young people who don't know each other and don't hate each other kill each other, because of the decisions of old people who know each other and hate each other but don't kill each other and shake hands at the end of the war."
The bitter truth of that statement is demonstrated daily by an account I follow called "Remember The Fallen," which posts photos and brief bios of soldiers America has lost in wars -- primarily (although not exclusively) the Vietnam War.
The lost potential of so much of the world's population -- especially its youth -- killed in wars over the past 100-plus years is incomprehensible. In World War I, Europe lost nearly 10 million military personnel (and another estimated 7 million civilians) for little cause other than the egos of European rulers. Those numbers are dwarfed by the carnage of World War II, which took the lives of 25 million in the military and more than 50 million civilians. Half of all the deaths were in China and the former Soviet Union.
One would think this would be enough death to last for generations. And yet here we are in 2024, with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and politicians warning that still more conflict will come, the price for which they will not pay, and the consequences of which they will not suffer.
Although there do exist pockets of people who say they aspire to kill everyone who isn't like them, the vast majority of Earth's population wants only to be left alone to live in peace. One thing we all have in common is the immediate need to tell our political, corporate, and cultural leaders that we are done with the wars they wage to aggrandize themselves and enrich the multinational corporations that provide an endless supply of armaments for slaughter. The same goes for megalomaniacal social reformers and "climate change" ideologues willing to destroy the world's economies and enslave or starve its population to bring about their green "utopia."
A message to be gleaned from our family's little cultural exchange with another family in eastern Germany is that the world's people want peace for themselves and our families. We deserve it. And we must demand it from those who profit from preventing it.
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