A man who was physically absent from his own house every single evening for six years, who came home at eleven-forty at night, and who stood in a doorway looking at five sleeping girls and one awake one for about ninety seconds and then went to bed.

People say: you never missed a recital.

I missed almost all of them.

I missed Ines’s entire third-grade year of soccer.

I missed six of Teddy’s eight middle-school choir concerts.

I have been to exactly two of the fourteen band events Solveig played in.

Here is the ledger, honestly.

The things I did not miss: every parent-teacher conference, because those are in the morning and I made them a rule.