The Frank Sinatra Song

It's not just a song. It's not just a singer. It's not just an era.

It's an everything that's almost impossible to explain. And the explanation is likely different for every Frank Sinatra Song listener. I can only try. Try to tell you what it means to me. What it does to me. How it can rearrange brain molecules. Turn me from one road to another (invariably to a better road). How it can bring back my physiology from 40 years ago -- from 50 years ago (yes, I go back that far). How it brings back my Dad.

My Dad was a Sinatra listener. It's how I ever heard him to begin with. My mother was a listener, too. She went to the Paramount shows. She sat through 2 films to see the stage show of big band plus Frank Sinatra. She stayed through it more than once. They took her bag lunch from her before she entered just to avoid such a thing. Missing lunch didn't stop my mom and her friend Rosemarie (my future godmother) from staying as long as possible. Every Saturday a big pile of brown-bagged lunches towered in the Paramount lobby. Then she went back at night with her aunt and uncle.

But my Dad. My Dad's not here anymore. So says the official word on all the physical things that says a person is on earth or not. But my Dad is everywhere still. Thank god for that. There can't really be a right world without him.

And when Frank Sinatra's singing he's here the most. 

I learned later that it was really Dean Martin that was my Dad's favorite.

No matter. The very tenor of Sinatra's voice sounds like my Dad's smile. The swing of the Nelson Riddle arrangements will always be the tempo at which my Dad danced. The open-hearted, ever-smiling wise guy attitude of Sinatra brings back my Dad's big laughs and wisecracks. The uplift of Sinatra's mood, how it can pull you up from the floor to the top of your favorite game -- that is all Dad. He did that without thinking. He did that with a look, a shake of his head, how he could cut through any mean mood and shake it down into just plain silliness.

Sinatra's heart-pouring ballads are Dad's easy tears, not sad tears, but tears that felt the earth, and the people, and the love. Tears that recognized life and how full it really is. Dad saw that. Sinatra sings it.

And as much as Sinatra carries my Dad's essence, and how my Mom owns Sinatra's music, it is so much mine, too. A child of the Beatles, I listen to Sinatra and feel: this is mine. This is me. This is what I am made of, too.

I guess because I'm made of my Dad. I'm made of my Mom. And, gosh darn jeepers, I'm lucky as hell. Ring-a-ding-ding.