So here's the short of it, 
New Pots for the front!
 
And here's the long.

Mom and I went to the Barn Nursery today. It's always fun to go play around at the Barn! I've been wanting to replace the pots we have at the front of the house for a long time, but I haven't ever found anything I thought I'd really like for more than a season or two. I've been thinking though that a cobalt blue would be really pretty. Today I found some.  

They are a bit smaller than the ones we've had, but I think the color will be really pretty when the flowers and flags are in the pots, I think I'll really like them.

The pots are made in VietNam!

Forty years ago if someone had told me that I'd be buying something that was made in VietNam, I would have thought that they were crazy. Now it's not that I hated everything VietNamese, but I just didn't have the imagination to imagine how VietNam could become anything except that country that was threatening to take our brothers, friends, and acquaintances.

Of course there was so much I didn't know - so much I still don't know. Recently when I was just outside D.C., I had a short bit of time to do some sight-seeing. We went for a walk on the mall.  I stopped at the World War II Memorial in honor of my Dad. We walked by the VietNam Memorial in honor of all the men of my generation who served. Those who died, and those who came back to a hostile nation that could not find a way to honor them for their sacrifice. And today I bought two flower pots and their saucers that some pottery worker(s) in that country labored over. They certainly couldn't have known that they'd end up in the hands of someone who would wonder who they were and what their lives were like.  I've only seen VietNam in pictures and heard of it in stories - fiction, non-fiction, oral histories - and I've seen it in the eyes of some of my former students and a few friends' adopted children. 

It will be nice to think from time to time, when I look at my flowers, of the connection that's been forged between our countries.