American Father's Day

When I was growing up, we celebrated neither Father's Day nor Mother's Day. I'm not sure exactly why. Mother's Day frequently coincided with my mother's birthday and was combined sort of. I have no memories of Father's Day.

Here I am at the milestone of sixty with two living parents, defintely a rarity, not that we celebrated my birthday when I visited them.

There's a disturbing op-ed in the New York Times by a man who didn't grow up with a father, though his father was and still lives. In Israel, that's pretty rare, though no doubt there are cases, although not meeting for 27 years would take a great effort in such a small country.

I do know of a family in which the husband disappeared, deserting wife and children. He was eventually found in a foreign country and forced to send the gett, Jewish divorce papters to free his wife. And later he established a rather limited long-distance relationship with his kids.

It seems that alive or dead or missing or removed, fathers still resound.