My Father’s Journals

I’m a fairly intermittent journal keeper myself, but my father wrote in his diaries every night without fail for many years. I still have them on my bookshelf, and this is the story of my father and his journals.

At the end of every year, my father would make a special trip to the bookshop to buy a new journal.
It was almost always the same one, a plain, buff colored book with the current year printed on the soft cover, and a host of features he found useful, such as the year’s holiday dates, dates and times of eclipses, tides and other phenomena, and a page devoted to personal finances with cash columns down each side.
The first few pages were devoted to a summary of the year just gone. In these he wrote addresses and contacts that would be useful for the year ahead.
The area devoted to each day’s events were quite small, just a few lines, but he wrote something in them every day, even if he wrote just the words “the usual” in the space provided.
My father’s journals were always fascinating to me. In those days, life was slower, and the evening was spent in simple pursuits - following the serials and comedy shows on the radio, and reading – my mother was a great reader and introduced me to many authors that have become lifelong favorites.
I can still see my father sitting at his desk, pen in hand, opening his new journal for the year, writing quickly in his bold, scrawling hand.
The entries were rarely very long. Even quite dramatic events were kept to a minimum of lines. Yet the day was not complete unless he wrote something in his journal, capped his pen, and stowed the book carefully away with the others in the drawer of the desk.
He started keeping a journal in 1956. The early entries were brief, but later on became more animated and detailed, as he found release for his feelings in this new venture of keeping a journal. Here he describes a winter emergency when we ran out of petrol.
“Monday January 9 1956: Snowed under, walked to village for petrol, got two gallons from a farmer. Snow plough winched us out, moved on to petrol pump, got three gallons, took flats off, but valve broken (here he was referring to two flat tires – the cold was so intense it snapped off the air valves) so put them back on again – hope for best, road surface almost impassable, in low gear all the time.”
Though he was always economical with words, these brief sentences bring back that day so vividly for me, recalling his determination that we should not be stranded in the cold, and in the car, despite the worst that fate could throw at us.
I often wondered why my father, so much less in love with the written word than my mother, was the one to keep a journal, which he did faithfully for more than 10 years. When he died in 1981, my mother gave the books to me, knowing that I had inherited his love of journaling.
How different my own journals were to his, as I leafed through them, reliving sad and happy and exciting days – mine were highly introspective and a day’s entry was likely to drag on for pages. But my father’s simple, economical journaling had a great beauty about it – in a few words he managed to capture the highs and lows of our lives.
And reading them, after keeping journals of my own, I finally understood why he never failed to make an entry, even if it was only one word.
My father was the most fully alive person I have ever known. Every day was precious to him, every day counted. In journaling he affirmed that no matter how much had gone wrong with a particular day, there was still triumph and beauty in it.
One of the things that he said to me as a child has become a kind of mantra for me.
“Remember,” he said, “no matter what kind of a day it has been, if you are still standing at the end of it, still ready to go out and fight again next day, you are the victor – you have won.”
My father’s journals are a continuing testament in my life to the victory of the day – the moment when you can sit down, and take up your pen, and make it count.

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