Learning the Lessons from 2020 to Create a Better Post-Covid World

By Annie Mark-Westfall — LETTERS FROM BERLIN

The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has arrived in Berlin with the autumn rain. My existence here feels more and more like living in a bubble; my experience as an expatriate floating between cultures, amplified by social distancing and the lockdowns that punctuate 2020. My children’s daycare is currently closed again, due to a confirmed Covid case. I steal moments between work and childcare, trying to form a narrative to make sense of the world; my world.

My Facebook feed is full of memories from this time last year. Photos of my Grandma Bea, who is 101 years old and still lives on her own in the house where she has been for the past six decades. I gaze at the pictures, my lifeline to the outside world.

Little oddities of hers that bemused me have taken on new meaning. Like the fact that she runs Ziploc bags through the dishwasher, using the single-use plastics over and over again; the stack of plastic Mott’s applesauce single-use containers in her cupboard, which she insists on washing and reusing as tiny bowls. All of these signs that her formative years were during the Great Depression.

Phrases like “Depression-era” reduce the human experiences and the traumas of uncertain times. They roll easily off the…