Tearing Down Walls
25 years ago today I got a call from my mother in the middle of the night. Through tears she kept repeating the words “The wall is falling! The wall is falling”. It took my sleepy brain a minute to realize that those were tears of joy not because of the impending disaster of a house collapse but that history was being made. And I had missed it by 3 days! I had just returned from a three week vacation there and if I had had even an inkling to what was about to happen, I would have stayed so I could have danced on top of that wall, too, that ugly grey concrete thing that was a constant in my early life. I knew it would fall eventually but did not expect it to happen in my life time. Now it’s been 25 years already, only three more years until it will be gone as long as it was up. The fact that the wall “only” stood for 28 years quite surprised me during my last visit this past September. Of course, I had known this, but now that I have lived a few more decades 28 years doesn’t seem very long. But since it was built a year before I was born, we lived close to it in the Southern part of Berlin and it didn’t come down until after I moved to the U.S. it was there throughout out my life.
After it fell it took me many more years to get used to it being gone. My family saw the reunification processes on a daily basis but it was strange for me during my visits to be able to just keep riding our bikes passed the old guard towers into the woods and fields for example. This was a spot where my best friend and I had our first experiment with pot, flipping off the East German guards watching the deviant West German youth through their binoculars from the towers in the “death strip”, the piece of land on their side of the wall marked by attack dog runs, barbed wire, alarms and other “defenses” (our dignity was further compromised when we promptly got so nauseous we threw up in the grass much to the delight of the guards). When my brother moved to Potsdam (the former East’s housing was much cheaper compared to the steep rent hikes in the West after reunification) I still would get nervous driving to his house, the old feelings of crossing into communist territory creeping up the back of my neck. It felt strange that the Berlin my young daughters were now experiencing was already so different. It was hard to explain the concept to them, what it was like to have a wall down the middle of a city, what it felt like, what it meant. Not living there full time and only coming for sporadic visits which were often fraught with family drama, hospitals and funerals, I only seldom ventured into the newly re-joined parts of East Berlin that quickly became a decades long construction zone.
Three years ago I ran the Berlin Marathon with Rich, my very first marathon. The 26.2 mile route took us through many parts of East Berlin that were unfamiliar to me before it wound through my old turf of Zehlendorf in the south, the Ku-Damm (once the heart of Berlin and a regular hangout) and finishing by running THROUGH the Brandenburg Gate into the Tiergarten (from the East to the West). Growing up looking over the wall at the gate which was located on the East side I was now running through it holding hands with Rich while my friends and family cheered! To say this was an emotional moment for me is an understatement!
That visit coupled with my recent one this year was a turning point for me and my relationship to my hometown. For years after I moved away I was homesick while at the same time loving living in America. At the same time at the end of each visit I was so ready to return to my “real” life in the U.S. Other immigrants understand this dichotomy well, feeling torn between two homes, two completely different lives. There is much more to say on that subject but that is for another time.
The overwhelming sentiment that came up for me during my last visit was how different a city Berlin is now compared to the one in which I grew up. It’s exciting and unsettling at the same time. If you grew up in Boston, for example, and now go back decades later, you’ll notice changes, of course. But it’s basically the same old streets, same landmarks and buildings for the most part. However to me, MY Berlin was joined at the spine by a whole other city. A city (East Berlin) that did not conjure up good emotions growing up, that always looked grim and grey, as if someone had turned off the lights, depressing and intimidating. I had never known Berlin as an undivided city as the older generation had, only knew and loved it as half of its old self. Joining the two cities together is like finding a long lost sibling after decades apart and shaping a new family, creating new common experiences when your individual ones were so very different (a subject also familiar to me). There are ups and downs, emotions are strong but it’s exhilarating and offers so much potential.
Something inexplicably is pulling me back towards the city now and I’m not sure why that is. Old age? Shedding of baggage? Breaking through my own walls? Whatever it may be I have learned to listen to my inner voice and therefore plan on spending a lot more time in Berlin on a regular basis again. As it is, I am currently working on a new very personal project, a series of paintings centering around the theme of walls. I hope to reveal it some time next year. I’m discovering Berlin anew for myself, not as a rebellious teenager itching to fly away to the wide open spaces and relatively uncomplicated psyche of America, but as a mature woman grateful for the blessings and lessons of having been born a Berliner and an opportunity to see what the city might hold for me now. As a grown-up, as an artist.
