I have always liked fountains – the flow of the water, the gentle splashing sound, the tiny atoms of water dancing in the sunlight. Although it seemed a little unnecessary to anyone but me, I decided I would like to have a fountain on the back deck of our patio which overlooks a lake. My husband felt that perhaps a whole lake might satisfy my need for water, but I told him the lake would not sit outside my bedroom window, and gurgle gently as I fell off to sleep.
We duly found a business along a country road that had acres of fountains from in-ground models to statues to huge cascading rock works. It was an aqueous sensory overload. As much as I coveted the one that ran down a slope and was recycled to run again, I knew I had to be much more modest in my choice. I soon found a large five-foot-high ceramic vase in lovely shades of blue that could be fitted out as a fountain. It was over-sized, so two young men graciously loaded my acquisition into the back of our car, and we were soon off with the necessary plastic tubes and waterproof electric motor.
When we arrived at our destination, we were the ones that had to lug the huge vase out of the car and around the house to its resting place. It was then that I noticed for the first time what was written on the bottom of the vessel. Made in Vietnam. I was stunned for a moment. Vietnam had been my youth, and in that youth Vietnam had been the enemy. My husband had served there as a Marine, and that conflict was the central fact of the first ten years of our marriage —- a place my husband was either going to or coming from.
And now our former enemy was making pottery vases to be sold in America, and bought by people who had last visited that country in camouflaged uniforms. It just seemed surreal. But then I began to count back to those long-ago years. That war had been over now for almost half a century, and the world had changed. History at large had marched on, and I realized I had better get in step if I wanted to march along with it. Yet, however much that was true, my personal past had not kept step with history, and that young girl with two small children and an absent husband was still very much there, stock still and staring at the markings on the bottom of a pottery vase.