By Morton Sherman, Ph.D.
Father’s Day always comes with a soundtrack.
For some, it’s the crack of old records in the living room. For others, it’s a favorite song sung at family gatherings, an anthem at Little League games, or a tune that drifts away from the kitchen during the holidays. For me, Father’s Day starts with a march.
As a child, my brothers and I traveled in the family car from Pennsylvania to New York. Somewhere along the journey, my father or mother would start singing the National Anthem:
“From the halls of Montezuma
To the coast of Tripoli…”
Soon all five boys join in. The car turned into a choir, a concert hall of imperfect voices. We sang because father sang for father, for us. We sang because it was expected. We sang because somehow it made the kilometers shorter.
I never thought much of it at the time. Looking back, I realize that those moments were about more than music.
They were about belonging.
Neurology tells us that music is one of the most powerful human social technologies. When people sing together, their breathing is synchronized. Their heart rates begin to match. Neural circuits associated with trust, empathy, and connection become more active. Researchers say so attract-the process by which separate rhythms move together.
Families have their own patterns of attraction
A rhythm develops in every household. Some rhythms are fun and predictable. Others are chaotic and uneven. However, in the midst of the noise of everyday life, children learn the pulse of their family and move within it.
My father was not a musician. He was a mechanic.
He never finished high school. He served in the navy. He was strict, hardworking and often angry. Life was not easy with him and he bore the scars of this struggle.
However, even when he wasn’t singing, he was teaching rhythm.
Not the rhythm of notes on the page, but the rhythm of showing up to work every day. The rhythm of fixing something broken. Rhythm of responsibility. The rhythm of putting food on the table for a family with five energetic boys who seemed to try everything. the border.
Our family life was rarely musically harmonious.
There were arguments. It sounded. There were narrow doors and hard lessons. Like many families, ours was more like a jazz improvisation than a carefully rehearsed symphony. Neuroscience offers another useful concept: resonance.
When one object vibrates, nearby objects can also start to vibrate. A tuning hit at the correct frequency can cause another tuning to sound the same note across the room. Humans work the same way.
We absorb the emotional tones of our surroundings
We tune in to the voices, values, and behaviors of the people who nurture us. Long before children understand words, they hear emotional tones in everyday life.
Some of what we inherit from our fathers comes through stories; some by example.
Some come through a thousand small moments that we barely notice until years later: a song in the car, a holiday tradition, a familiar laugh, the sound of a voice calling us to dinner, or the way dad struggles.
The truth is that we cannot choose our fathers.
Fathers can be gentle, strict, present or absent. They can leave us with precious memories and others leave us with lessons that we spend a lifetime trying to understand.
Almost every father leaves his rhythm behind. The challenge for everyone is deciding what to do with it.
Essential reading of family dynamics
As adults, we become the leaders of our own lives. We can repeat rhythms that have served us well. We can soften the ones that caused the pain. We can add new melodies and create harmonies that our forefathers never imagined.
In this sense, every father passes the baton to the next generation.
My father gave me one. Not through wealth. Not through academic achievement. Not with meaningful words.
Submitted it through work, stabilityloyalty and love that were often expressed more through actions than words.
Today, more than thirty years later, I still hear his voice: in a song, in the way I approach a call, in a phrase that suddenly comes out of my mouth, sounds strangely like something he said, or when I look in the mirror in the morning and look at my face: “Dad, how did you look in the mirror this morning?”
Neurologists can explain this by: memory networks, emotional coding, and neural pathways have been strengthened over decades.
We know it as presence
The people we love never leave us. Their rhythm continues. Their voices are heard. Their songs are playing.
On Father’s Day, when I hear the opening lines of the Marine Corps Anthem, I’m once again the boy in a crowded car headed for New York with four brothers singing at the top of my lungs.
The miles are long. Voices are loud.
Dad smiles.
In a moment, the music brings him back.
This may be one of music’s greatest gifts—not only does it help us remember the people we love, but it also allows us to feel their presence again, if only for the length of a song.
