Girls need fathers: a Father's Day tribute

Tomi Johnson and her father

Father's Day is coming up Sunday, June 17, and all women should take a look back at their relationships with their fathers. This is a tribute to my father, Thomas Vivian Morris, who died in 1969.

Girls need fathers. No matter what your relationship, it is God's plan that fathers should care for their little girls. That means giving them love, advice, encouragement, and confidence for the future.

Every girl needs an agape loving father who unconditionally loves her. Even if she has brothers, or uncles, husbands, or boyfriends, nothing can replace the person who you have known as your father, whether he is your biological father or not. I know. My father died three months after my 16th birthday, too soon for me to really get to know him, but I have great memories.

My dad was not a deadbeat, and he spent as much time with me as he could, even though he was a college professor and businessman. He was a serious fellow, loved jazz, and didn't talk much.

My fondest memories are times we rode in his car when you didn't have to wear seat belts. I would ride on the armrest, put my small arms around his neck, and watch the dotted lines in the road. We would often stop at a roadside vegetable market and plug a watermelon to gauge its sweetness.

T.V. Morris was a botanist.

I would help him run after pigs in the peach orchard. I would eat raw corn that he picked from his cornfield. I would watch him look at the tag hanging from the Easter dress mom bought me at the department store and listen to him fumble with the change in his pocket.

I remember my father in twos. I remember him spanking me twice: once for loosing my new shoe in a drainage ditch and the other for mouthing off for wanting to go to church on a rainy Sunday.

I remember him failing off a ladder while painting the out building and failing off his riding lawnmower the same afternoon. I remember him crying two times: once at my great grandfather's funeral and again in a Vanderbilt hospital when he said he was afraid he would never see me again. I remember drawing fluid from his skin boils caused by radiation poison.  I remember feeding him his last spoonful of jello.

Our family on my 6th birthday

I guess what I love most about my father are the beautiful memories that have been stamped on my heart. They can be retrieved whenever I want to even though I can't bring him back.

FACTS ABOUT FATHERS from the U.S. Census Bureau: 

Estimated number of fathers across the nation. - 70.1 million

Number of single fathers in 2011 - 1.7 million

Number of stay at home dads - 176,000

©2012 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.