life without a plot

My best friend at the time was half-German, half-Mexican. (Her father was German, her mother, Mexican -- you never knew what to expect when you went over for dinner.) Anyway, I spent a lot of time at their house in those days, and I was there for dinner the night that they first began letting people through the border crossings. It came across the radio while we were eating. Bettina's father was of course excited, as his mother lived in Frankfurt an der Oder at the time. About a year later, her grandmother finally came to visit.