I didn’t know that I’d record this song. I didn’t know that I’d pair this footage with it.
I did know that my father was entering palliative care. I was on my way home to see him. I didn’t really understand that this would be my last bridge crossing, from Detroit to Windsor, while he was still alive. I saw that the rain was beautiful, on the windows of the cab.
For many years, Dad had picked me up from the Detroit airport.
I knew to say these things to him.
Years ago, my father told me of the summer he worked “on the line” at Chatham Steel — across from his father. Dad told me of the oil baths that his father would dunk the molten steel into — after the formed metal parts came out of a pounding press. My grandfather was very deaf, by the time I knew him, because of that pounding noise. Dad said that when he looked up one day, at that factory, and saw his father’s face drenched in oil an sweat, he knew “why he drank.”