Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Or is it Fathers’ Day?

I’ve never paid much attention, since I didn’t meet my own father until I was forty-eight. And we never really acknowledged what I call this Hallmark holiday.

Still, a conversation with my son this evening made me reconsider. His own father passed away a year ago at this time. And several fathers of his close friends have died recently. So he was most reverent about the day.

I saw a lot of tributes on Facebook too, most of them filled with superlatives about the particular man being honored. But one of them, written by a close friend of my son, noted the absence of a father in his life and the ensuing bewilderment about this day.

Perhaps because of my own background, I found his post the most poignant of all.