Can You See? - Doug

My one regret from this summer really isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things. We got to see our family and friends. We got to eat at our favorite restaurants…sometimes twice, as was the case with Steak and Shake and the Olive Garden. We got to sit around in my mom’s kitchen while the dip-it and beer flowed just as abundantly as the laughs. We sat on Mandy’s parents back deck and watched the deer play in the woods while we laughed and ate pork chops off the grill. I even got in a round of golf with my father in law and my brothers-in-law. I’m sure they really appreciated this because when I play golf the people I play with end up feeling really good about themselves. In all these wonderful experiences my only regret was that we did not make it to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play. Like I said, life will go on, but I’d have to go back several years to try to find a summer when I didn’t go to at least one Red Sox game.

The one consolation in all of this was that we did make it to a Detroit Tigers game while we were in MI. I enjoyed this not because they were my team but because, while I am a Red Sox fan first and foremost, I consider myself a fan of the sport of baseball as well. I like visiting other parks around the country even if the Sox aren’t playing. In fact I find it to be much safer for me if they aren’t.

There’s nothing like hearing the National Anthem played in a major league ballpark for the first time after being away for so long. I stood there in Detroit with my (Red Sox) hat over my heart and I cried. Luckily I had sunglasses on so I didn’t look like I’d completely lost it and was somehow mistaking the game for a Lee Greenwood concert. But in all seriousness I cried. Until you’ve lived away from almost everyone and almost everything you hold dear for quite a long period of time it may be difficult to really grasp the question that Francis Scott Key was asking. Imprisoned on a British ship during the War of 1812, Key awoke one morning to find himself staring in at the fort where the U.S. flag was flying the night before and asking if it was still there. “O Say, can you see…?” The whole song is a beautiful question. Last year I found myself asking this very same question. Are the things that we hold so dear still there? Are the people we love ok? So to stand in ballpark and get the answer to that question really was quite moving. The bat still cracks, the crowd still roars, and I still have ketchup on my shirt from where I dropped my hot dog. Some things don’t change.

So what are you taking for granted? Can you see? I’m asking myself right now if the leaves have begun to change color in New England. Mandy has been reading a book by Bill Bryson in which he contends that New England in the fall is quite possibly one of the most beautiful sights to behold. Can you see? I’m quite sure I agree. There are certain places in this world that I think sometimes God himself must pull up a chair and park himself there to admire what he’s done. I can think of a deck in Michigan where God must sit some evenings just to watch the sun set through the trees and the animals play in the glade. Can you see? Take the time to look around you. With all of the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in the air around us don’t get distracted from what really matters, the gifts that God has given us.