I got out of an arranged date because of an emergency call, which sounds noble until you realize I would have used almost anything. A flat tire. Sudden diarrhea. A national crisis. I am that person who hides behind work because work is clean. Work has protocols. Work has measurable outcomes. Dating, on the other hand, feels like joining a group project where everyone cries, no one reads the instructions, and somehow I still end up responsible for the PowerPoint.
So there I was on a Sunday morning, driving through a downpour on my way to catch a birth, with Italian arias filling the car as if the universe had decided my commute needed drama. Then ’O Sole Mio came on. The first notes did not announce themselves. They just entered quietly, like someone opening a door inside me.
My dad used to sing Italian arias while fixing the car. He turned the garage into his own opera house, except with grease, old rags, and tools I still cannot name with confidence. ’O Sole Mio was one of his favorites. He sang it like the sun had personally written him a love letter. Naturally, I tried to join him from memory while driving to the hospital, chasing the high notes with more courage than evidence. The rain was biblical. The road was half river. Just as I reached the climactic “na jurnata ’e sole,” a tree branch slammed into my windshield like nature had finally reviewed my performance. I did not finish the lyric. I yelled “AY PUTA!” with a crunch so crisp it could have been served with vinegar.
Still, the song stayed. It has always known how to get past me. Somewhere between the cracked glass and the rain, something in my chest loosened. Not a big revelation. Nothing cinematic. Just a small, inconvenient tenderness. I thought, was that you, Dad?
I don’t know, Dad. I wish I had your voice. Instead, you left me the no-facial-hair gene. Not cool. Still, thank you for the no-balding gene. I will accept that victory with humility and conditioner.
You were never the loud parent. You did not make speeches. You did not flood a room with advice. But you listened in your own way. Your silences were not empty. They had space in them. I think that was one of the things I learned too late.
I wish you had taught me how to drive instead of that hot-tempered man who made the steering wheel feel like a board exam with traffic cones. I still do not know how to fix a car. I can barely check the oil without feeling accused by the engine. I wish you were here to point at the proper caps and ports, humming an aria while explaining what goes where, as if car maintenance were not a chore but a small act of devotion.
I wish you had seen me become chief. Like you, I was called hepe. I wish I had known then how much I would need your steadiness. I wish you had seen the sablay, the hood, the medallions, all those things that looked ceremonial from the outside but felt, to me, like receipts for surviving. Before memory took too much from you, you remembered me as your high school boy about to enter UP. That was where I stayed in your mind. Not the intern. Not the doctor. Not the chief. Just the boy at the beginning, still leaving home.
I wish you were here to give me relationship advice, although knowing you, you would probably say three sentences and let me figure out the rest. Maybe that would have been enough. Maybe you would tell me that love is not always a trapdoor. That wanting someone does not make me foolish. That even an off-key song is better than a life spent clearing your throat. But you are not here, Dad. I am left with a half-sung aria, a cracked windshield, and a heart suddenly trying to act like it did not hear anything.
My father died when I was a medical intern. He had been brilliant, honest, and stubborn in the way only principled men can be stubborn. Then dementia took him in pieces, quietly at first, then without shame. He still knew he had a son, but only as a boy about to enter UP. He did not know that the boy had grown into the man in scrubs standing in front of him, nearly done with medical school, waiting for recognition from someone who was already leaving while still breathing.
I parked outside the hospital with the rain still throwing itself at the world. For a moment, I stayed inside the car. I wiped the fog from the glass and saw myself there: wet, tired, slightly ridiculous, and not nearly as untouchable as I like to pretend. Then I whispered, “’O Sole Mio.” Not the famous part. Not the big note. Just the quiet part. The part that hurts because it does not ask permission.
The song stayed with me even after I turned off the engine. It sat in the rain, in the fogged glass, in that little pause before I had to enter the hospital and become useful again. One minute, it was just a song from my father’s garage. The next, I was talking to him in a parked car, laughing under my breath because crying would ruin the schedule. Maybe love is not the interruption I keep trying to avoid. Maybe it has been the music under everything, patient and annoying and impossible to fully silence. Maybe the point was never to hit every note, only to sing honestly enough that someone knows you meant it.
So here I am. Still single. Still stubborn. Still suspicious of feelings that arrive without an appointment. Still capable of dodging tree branches and intimacy with almost equal skill. But that morning, I let something reach me. I let myself miss you before turning it into a joke. I let myself want something without immediately calling it impractical. It is not a conversion story. It is not a grand healing. It is just a small crack in the armor. For now, that feels like enough.
Ciao, hepe. Keep singing wherever you are. I will try to listen better next time.
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