Exactly 25 years to the day — on November 9, 1989 — the world’s single most significant divider tore down —the Berlin Wall. Earlier in summer that same year, I was privy to a moving encounter there. With a little old lady, a war widow, sharing lessons of love and longing in a post-blitz world. I was spending a few months as a journalism student in what was West Berlin. With frequent forays into the enigmatic Ost (East) that lay beyond the patrolled-to-paranoia Checkpoint Charlie border.

We met by chance on a May evening, six months before the West we were both in united poignantly with the sundered East. I was waiting my turn to call home in a phone queue on Rhine Strasse. A mild thud later, I saw a bent frame collapse. The wizened woman had tripped with her walker, weighed down by a wriggly dachshund pup and bags spilling groceries. The dog danced around her gnarled ankles yelping as I helped retrieve the parcels. “Thanks dear,” she gasped in a tremulous American accent. Then pointing to the telephone booth she drawled, “Back in line now, don’t risk losing your place.” Touching a flyaway stray strand of my dark hair, she asked, “New here? Speaking to folks home?”