By Morton Sherman, Ph.D.

Father’s Day always arrives with a soundtrack.

For some, it is the crackle of old records spinning in the living room. For others, it is a favorite song sung off-key at family gatherings, the anthem played at Little League games, or the melody that drifted from the kitchen during holidays. For me, Father’s Day begins with a march.

As children, my brothers and I would pile into the family car for long drives from Pennsylvania to New York. Somewhere along the journey, my father or mother would begin singing the Marine Corps Hymn:

“From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli…”

Soon all five sons would join in. The car became a chorus, a rolling concert hall of imperfect voices. We sang because Dad sang, for dad, for us. We sang because it was expected. We sang because, somehow, it made the miles shorter.

At the time, I never thought much about it. Looking back, I realize those moments were about far more than music.

They were about belonging.

Neuroscience tells us that music is one of the most powerful human social technologies. When people sing together, their breathing synchronizes. Their heart rates begin to align. Neural circuits associated with trust, empathy, and connection become more active. Researchers call this entrainment—the process by which separate rhythms begin to move together.

Families have their own forms of entrainment

Every household develops a rhythm. Some rhythms are joyful and predictable. Others are chaotic and uneven. Yet somehow, amid the noise of daily life, children learn the beat of their family and begin to move within it.

My father was not a musician. He was a mechanic.

He never graduated from high school. He served in the Marines. He was tough, hardworking, and often angry. Life had not been particularly gentle with him, and he carried the marks of that struggle.

Yet even when he wasn’t singing, he was teaching rhythm.

Not the rhythm of notes on a page, but the rhythm of showing up for work every day. The rhythm of fixing what was broken. The rhythm of responsibility. The rhythm of putting food on the table for a family with five energetic sons who seemed determined to test every boundary.

Our family life was rarely harmonious in the musical sense.

There were arguments. There was shouting. There were slammed doors and hard lessons. Like many families, ours often sounded more like jazz improvisation than a carefully rehearsed symphony. Neuroscience offers another useful concept: resonance.

When one object vibrates, nearby objects can begin to vibrate as well. A tuning fork struck at the right frequency can cause another tuning fork across the room to hum with the same note. Humans work in much the same way.

We absorb the emotional tones around us

We resonate with the voices, values, and behaviors of the people who raise us. Long before children understand words, they are listening to emotional melodies embedded in daily life.

Some of what we inherit from our fathers comes through stories; some through example.

Some arrive through a thousand small moments we barely notice until years later: a song in the car, a holiday tradition, a familiar laugh, the cadence of a voice calling us to dinner, or the way a father carries himself through hardship.

The truth is that we do not get to choose our fathers.

Fathers can be gentle, or stern, or present, or absent. They can leave us with treasured memories, and others leave us with lessons we spend a lifetime trying to understand.

Almost every father leaves a rhythm behind. The challenge for each is deciding what to do with it.

As adults, we become conductors of our own lives. We can repeat the rhythms that served us well. We can soften those that caused pain. We can add new melodies and create harmonies our fathers never imagined.

In that sense, every father passes a baton to the next generation.

My father handed one to me. Not through wealth. Not through academic achievement. Not through eloquent speeches.

He handed it on through work, resilience, loyalty, and love that was often expressed more through actions than words.

Today, more than thirty years after his passing, I still hear echoes of him: in a song, in the way I approach a challenge, in a phrase that unexpectedly comes out of my mouth sounding remarkably like something he would have said, or, when I look in the mirror in the morning, and when looking at my face I say, “Dad, how did you get in mirror? Good morning.”

The neuroscientists might explain this through memory networks, emotional encoding, and neural pathways strengthened over decades.

We know it as presence

The people we love never entirely leave us. Their rhythms continue. Their voices linger. Their songs keep playing.

On Father’s Day, when I hear the opening lines of the Marine Corps Hymn, I am once again a boy in a crowded car with four brothers, heading toward New York, singing at the top of our lungs.

The miles are long. The voices are loud.

Dad is smiling.

For a moment, the music brings him back.

That may be one of music’s greatest gifts—not merely helping us remember the people we love, but allowing us to feel their presence again, if only for the length of a song.