Clyde was in the nation’s capital for his Clyde job.
The workday was over, which meant Clyde had moved on to the next important item on the agenda:
Finding a meal of epic proportions.
Somewhere within walking distance was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and Clyde was headed toward it with considerable purpose.
Then he found a craft market.
This created a problem.
Clyde was extremely hungry.
But Clyde has also never been particularly good at walking past a collection of unusual things without investigating.
The buffet would have to wait.
Clyde wandered through the market until he came across a booth filled with handcrafted patriotic decorations. Eagles. Flags. American emblems. Among them were wall-hanging eagles assembled from pieces of carved pecan wood.
Clyde liked the eagles.
Clyde also likes pecan pie.
This was not necessarily relevant, but it certainly did not hurt the sales process.
The man running the booth was an older gentleman, small in stature, whose English was limited.
He looked at Clyde.
Clyde looked at him.
The man asked a question.
“Soldier?”
Clyde stared at him blankly.
The man tried again.
He mimed holding a rifle.
Then he began marching in place, lifting his knees dramatically.
Then he stopped and saluted.
Oh.
Soldier.
Yeah.
Clyde had done that for several years when he was younger.
Clyde explained as best he could that he had once been a soldier, but not anymore.
The old man smiled.
Same for him.
But not quite the same.
As the two men continued talking, something about the conversation changed.
There was a familiarity in the way the old man carried himself. Clyde could not have explained it exactly, but this did not feel like somebody whose entire military experience had happened behind a desk.
This man had known war.
In broken English, he explained that he had fought in Vietnam.
Then came the part Clyde had not expected.
He had fought for the North Vietnamese Army.
The NVA.
For a moment, Clyde did not really know what to say.
Decades earlier, this man would have been on the opposite side from Clyde’s father.
An enemy.
At least, that was what the uniforms would have said.
And yet here they were.
Two former soldiers standing together in Washington, D.C., surrounded by wooden American eagles.
Clyde looked around the booth again.
American flags.
Eagles.
Red, white and blue.
Whatever this man’s life had been during the war, it had continued for decades afterward.
People move.
Countries change.
Wars end.
Lives continue.
And sometimes history eventually places two people who might once have been taught to fear one another on opposite sides of a little craft-market table.
The awkwardness disappeared.
In its place was something Clyde recognized immediately.
Camaraderie.
They did not share a language particularly well.
They had never served in the same military.
They had never worn the same uniform.
But each of them understood something about the other that did not require very many words.
The old soldier pointed toward the eagle Clyde had been considering.
“Fifty percent!”
Clyde objected.
He wanted to pay full price.
The man refused.
Fifty percent.
Clyde tried again.
The man was not having it.
So Clyde arrived at the only reasonable solution.
He bought two.
This, unfortunately, created an entirely new Clyde problem.
Clyde was traveling.
And Clyde was now the proud owner of two somewhat large, fragile wooden eagles that needed to survive a trip home.
He spent much of the next three days figuring out how to accomplish that.
He eventually did.
Nearly twenty years later, both eagles still hang in Clyde’s office.
And when Clyde looks at them, he does not primarily think about the buffet he never reached on time.
He thinks about an old soldier.
A man born somewhere else.
A man who had once fought beneath a different flag.
A man who, in another time and another place, would have been considered the enemy.
But that was not who he was standing in front of Clyde that evening.
He was simply another old soldier who recognized one of his own.
The two of them had far more reason to talk about what they shared than to argue about what had once separated them.
That is probably worth remembering.
People can inherit divisions they did not create.
They can stand on opposite sides.
They can even spend part of their lives believing the person across from them is the enemy.
But opposite sides do not have to be permanent.
Wars can end. Anger can fade. People can change.
And sometimes respect begins with nothing more complicated than looking across a table, recognizing something familiar in another person, and deciding that the past has already taken enough.