I didn’t post anything on Mother’s Day. i didn’t have time. I was busy making arrangements at work and home so that I could fly down to Florida to stay with my mom. She’s 94, and she’s slowed down a lot over the past few years. (At her 90th birthday party, she danced late into the night with her students. Yes, students. She taught line dancing until she was 92 and still acts as teacher emeritus by critiquing when she’s well enough to go to classes.)

So I didn’t think much about Mother’s Day. I sent a present because I wouldn’t be down there on time to give it to her myself. I got phone calls from my kids, which was nice. But it was just a Hallmark Holiday. No big deal. Because I still have Mom.

Father’s Day is a different matter. I have no one to send cards to. Oh, I told my husband a few weeks ago he could replace the broken dishwasher. (It’s been broken for months, and I kept saying we needed to meet other expenses first, but he really hates having to do dishes by hand, much more than I. And, yes, I’m the one who makes most of the financial decisions because I have spreadsheets projecting income and expenses, and I do the taxes, and he only has a PhD and a broad understanding of macroeconomics.) I knitted him a pair of socks, one of which is not quite done. I made him breakfast and will cook one of his favorite dinners.

I did those things for my husband because he’s a wonderful father, but he isn’t my father. It’s the kids’ contributions to the day that matter most to him. I don’t really celebrate Father’s Day. I haven’t for a dozen years, since my father died suddenly on Thanksgiving morning. For me, Father’s Day is about the void he left in my life.

He was a wonderful father too. He was quiet, with a sly sense of humor. He wasn’t at home a lot, and often when he was there he was sleeping, and many of my memories are about being quiet so as not to wake Daddy. He did shift work, so he was only supposed to be on a typical daytime schedule two weeks out of six. In reality, he often worked sixteen-hour days. In the evenings when I was home from school, he might be at work, or he might be sleeping, exhausted because he’d gone in at midnight the night before and not gotten back home until after five.

I don’t recall ever resenting this, although I felt bad that he was tired all the time. Because when he was there and awake, he was everything later generations have insisted fathers should be. He spent time with us, encouraged us, and oh, was he wonderful with babies and toddlers! He understood the concept of quality time before it was invented. His love was such that it never once occurred to me that he was absent because he didn’t care or wanted to be elsewhere. He was absent because he believed he needed to be to provide for us. My mother worked too, but she arranged her schedule so that she could be there for us. That must have been a hard battle for both of them, juggling those hours and minutes. I know it was, because my husband and I did some smaller-scale juggling when our kids were small.

Dad had to take early retirement because the stress of that shift work hurt his heart. I was afraid we’d lose him, because without a job he seemed bereft at first. But once all four kids were through college, my parents moved to Florida, and I saw the man he might have been all along without that crushing weight of responsibility. He had a social life! He loved the retirement community that seemed like hell to me, right down to being on the bocce ball team. He adored his grandchildren and saw them as much as he could. One of my nephews called him his best friend ever. My younger daughter is in her twenties, and she still sleeps with the Pooh Bear he bought her.

Dad had almost twenty really good years after he retired. But he still would say the best years were back when he was raising us. I wish he had taken it easier, looked after his health more and worried about our college funds less. But he gave us the great gift of knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that we were loved, so I can’t second-guess his choices. I miss him.