O Say Can You See

Recently, I was on Facebook, and I came across a video. The video is of the beginning of a hockey game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Nashville Predators. I know what you're thinking. "Nashville has a hockey team?" I was shocked too.

The video, if you haven't seen it, was captured on a phone. It begins with a woman singing The Star Spangled Banner into a microphone, as is customary before most sports matches. And then her microphone crackles, and dies. It takes only a few seconds for the entire crowd to take up the song in unison. The game was played in Canada. The crowd was, by and large, Canadian.




After watching this video, I began to cry. Blubber really. My heart ached with gratitude toward people I've never met for something I didn't witness. I don't even like hockey, and the Predators apparently beat the Maple Leafs mercilessly. Why was I crying?

It took me a while to figure it out. I was crying because when we sing our national anthem, it's not a performance. It's a love song. To our home, to our way of life. Our Canadian neighbors understood the importance of that, and they respect us enough to help us express that.

I'm sure they will tell you that it's just common decency. And it is. But my gratitude is for that common decency. That they look at us as neighbors, as friends.

And then I became very ashamed that I don't know the words to "O Canada." So I looked it up.




I was thinking about our national anthems. And a thought hit me like a brick wall. "The Star Spangled Banner" is a song of uncertainty. The words were written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key in the middle of a battle. He was essentially asking one question. "Is my home still free?"

He was facing an external enemy - the British, in the war of 1812. We fight a different war today. One with battles in the voting booth and the floor of the legislature. But a war all the same - to protect our liberties.

In these very uncertain times, I find our national anthem more and more fitting. I wonder how long "what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming" will endure. I wonder if it hasn't already begun to crumble. I wonder if it can be restored. I wonder if that star spangled banner still waves "over the land of the free and the home of the brave."

I for one, will continue to fight to make sure that is always the case. See you at the polls.