What do children know about their fathers? What do fathers know about their offspring?

Connections between fathers and sons - and daughters - are vital. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report "Fathers' Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006-2010," published in 2013, notes various studies suggesting that involved fathers have a positive influence on children's lives, including academic success and reduced chances for delinquency and substance abuse. How those connections are made is not as important as that time is made to make connections.

Father's Day is this Sunday, June 18. Here is an opportunity for fathers, sons, and daughters to make connections and create a family history for all to share - perhaps in writing.

Once upon a time, we wrote letters. Script flowed in long, scholarly sentences, filling every inch of parchment. We shared our thoughts of the moment, our memories of the past, our hopes for the future with each other. We told the stories of our lives as they unfolded, one paragraph at a time, then sealed it and sent it away to bring joy, solace, and news. We captured our lives - perhaps edited them - so that someone, somewhere would hear the words rise from the paper, embed themselves into his or her thoughts. We wrote letters so that others would know a piece of us that might be difficult to voice.

It is a quaint art, now, letter writing. Instead of parsing thoughts onto paper, we are inclined to toss out our ponderings in 140 characters or less via devices, multiple times a day. We share moments that are so temporary they sometimes miss the mark. They lack intimacy.

What are a father's likes and dislikes, hopes and fears? What does a father know of his children's dreams? Who are the people and moments that have made a man a father? What is the best advice a child has received from his or her father?

What makes the other laugh, what makes him or her cry? How has history affected a father and his relationship to his children?

There is much that goes unsaid in the every day. Moments of teaching and learning about each other pass by, unspoken and never noted.

Writing prompts marketed to encourage written conversation have gained in popularity lately, mainly aimed at mother and daughters; but there is no need to let family history be one-sided.

Time taken to record the little things that reveal a father, a son, a daughter to each other, is time well spent. Write about the big moments in life, the little observances, the people and places that have been critical in life.

If revealing one's innermost feelings on paper is an uncomfortable exercise, make the time to simply be with each other, to listen to each other, to hear each other.

Share the thoughts. Don't let the secret selves of fathers and children remain hidden from each other, the people around them, or those to come.

This Father's Day, it could be the gift of a lifetime.