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.

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 (with the help of online software) 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:

“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.

I saw a quote on social media 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.

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 ourselves and our families. We deserve it. And we must demand it from those who profit from preventing it.