You always hurt the one you love

After a post-shoulder-surgery checkup, we are driving back to my 92-year-old Dad’s apartment in the senior community where he and my Mom moved a little less than a year ago, just before she left us for good. We’re driving in my new Ford EV pickup that has all sorts of newfangled features, among them the ability to play music (as well as text messages) from my phone. I put on some tracks from my own album-in-progress, a project I’ve been working on for way too long, and suddenly he begins to sing in a quavering voice “You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all…”. I shut off my music and he continues on “You always take the sweetest rose and crush it till the petals fall…”. He tells me he imagines me singing this song. “Hey, Siri” I say, “play You Always Hurt the One You Love”. Despite being a techno nerd, somehow I’ve never figured out how to use Siri before this. Connie Francis begins to sing, in that amazing style where the words and phrasing are literally half-speed to the tempo. I am thinking that nobody gets how to sing a slow song anymore. When I glance at him, my Dad has tears in his eyes. When the song is over, he reminds me that when I was little, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, I became upset and asked him why he would crush a baby on someone. I didn’t understand that she was in fact singing “I’ve got a crush, my baby, on you”. It’s true that punctuation is important. “Hey, Siri” I say again, “Play I’ve Got a Crush”. Frank Sinatra begins to croon and another tear trickles softly down my Dad’s cheek, but he’s smiling.