Star Spangled Banner Syndrome

It was back in college that my friend Bruce first gave it a name: “Star Spangled Banner Syndrome.” It is that feeling you get when someone sings the Star Spangled Banner, when you are standing there innocently, just saluting the flag before a sports event, or a special ceremony. Even though you are not very patriotic, all of a sudden there is this lump in your throat and you can’t sing anymore, and for some of us, real tears are sneaking out of the corner of our eyes.
This syndrome, where tears come creeping up on me from some unknown source, remains a mystery to me and others who have it. We have tried to decide if it comes from a deep well of sadness, or joy or some mixture of the two. Is it related to the current event, or one long forgotten? Is it an event similar in happenstance or just related in feeling? Is it an indication that we are so completely in touch with our emotions that they can come spilling out at any time, or is it that our feelings are so buried that it takes a completely unrelated circumstance to allow us to truly feel them?
Until Bruce spoke about it, I thought I was the only one who felt this way. It is something I have only recently begun to share with other friends. I was heartened by seeing in church, first hand, that others suffer, or enjoy this syndrome. I see it when people share their joys, not just their concerns in church. I note it when someone pauses quietly before continuing to read a moving passage.
There are those who know I have it, and only have to look over at me during a variety show, or presentation by the children, to see my tears. There are those who don’t know I have it. They don’t know that the simplest words can bring on the tears, the simplest melody sung, a sad or even happy story shared.
Sometimes it feels like a relief to cry softly about something, whatever the reason. Sometimes it feels like a terrible reminder that much as I like to think so, all is not right with my world.
My father had this syndrome. He used to cry whenever I played “Climb Every Mountain” on the piano. He was a quiet man and rarely showed how he felt. But when I would play, he would rise from his chair in the living room where he spent the better part of every evening reading, and stand beside me singing, as much as he could through the lump in his throat. It makes me cry to think of it now.
It is a little like Betty Friedan’s “Problem that has no name.” To call it “Star Spangled Banner Syndrome” trivializes it some; it is much more complex than that and occurs far more frequently than at sports events. But it is a start at definition of a phenomenon that occurs during happy times and sad, or just during the ordinary every day times when we least expect it.