My dad’s been gone for more than a decade, and though he was an avid computer user up to the end, he was also a very private person. The thought of my writing about him here on Fathers Day would have prompted a serious talk. “Do what you want,” he would have said. “Just leave me out of it.”

In deference to his imagined request, I will not write about him here – only about his advice – the two pieces that have especially stuck through the years. So here, from my dad…

It only takes one. This refers to those times when we want someone or something to come into our lives, but the statistics are against us. For example, selling a house in the current market. If you told my dad the odds of finding a home buyer were against you, he would say, “It only takes one,” usually followed by his five recurring words of encouragement: “Don’t get your dauber down.” Whatever a dauber is.

You can’t build a fence around her. This sage observation was actually traded back and forth by both my parents so often that it’s hard to know which one started it. But it refers to those times, now popularly known as helicopter parenting, when a parent wants to jump in and stomp on a child’s passion to do something that could be a little bit dangerous. This one came up for me just yesterday when the youngest boarded a plane for six weeks in Israel. “You can’t build a fence around her,” my dad reminded me. I gave her a hug and told her to have a great time.

Thanks, Dad. I think.