Note #1: My Father's Diary

In the poem My Father's Diary, by Sharon Olds, the narrator reads the vague diary of her father and notices the quick changes from the young boy's perspective of everyday chores and activities to the perspective of playful and passionate feelings of love.  Though the poem gives the narrator a gift from her father, the narrator's language is full of simple yet delicate words that introduces the father's compassionate feelings of love.  The narrator is reading the diary, which shares a timeline of the young boy's, now her father's, events.  It starts off with plain, everyday activities that every boy does.  The boy "went to look at a car" as well as "went to try out some new tennis racquets".  The lack of emotion during the beginning of the passage suggests boredom with his innocent life.  However, the boy's life is boring and slow "until Lois" turned it around and the boy started to experience new emotions that transformed his life.  He started "worshipping her" as all he wanted to do was spend time with her.  The transforming sentences in the diary documents the first phases of his love for Lois.  First love can never be taken for granted; the young boy has fallen for Lois and doesn't know what he has "ever done to deserve such a girl."  The run on events of growing up happens so fast, and when it is written down in a diary, the pure and honest words reveal the unique and surprising emotions of one's first love.

My Father's Diary by Sharon Olds

My Father's Diary

My Father's Diary

By Sharon Olds b. 1942 Sharon Olds

I get into bed with it, and spring

the scarab legs of its locks. Inside,

the stacked, shy wealth of his print—

he could not write in script, so the pages

are sturdy with the beamwork of printedness,

WENT TO LOOK AT A CAR, DAD

IN A GOOD MOOD AT DINNER, WENT

TO TRY OUT SOME NEW TENNIS RACQUETS,

LUNCH WITH MOM, life of ease—

except when he spun his father's DeSoto on the

ice, and a young tree whirled up to the

hood, throwing up her arms—until

LOIS. PLAYED TENNIS, WITH LOIS,

LUNCH WITH MOM AND LOIS, LOIS

LIKED THE CAR, DRIVING WITH LOIS,

LONG DRIVE WITH LOIS. And then,

LOIS! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! SHE IS SO

GOOD, SO SWEET, SO GENEROUS, I HAVE

NEVER, WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE

TO DESERVE SUCH A GIRL? Between the dark

legs of the capitals, moonlight, soft

tines of the printed letter gentled

apart, nectar drawn from serif, the

self of the grown boy pouring

out, the heart's charge, the fresh

man kneeling in pine-needle weave,

worshipping her. It was my father

good, it was my father grateful,

it was my father dead, who had left me

these small structures of his young brain—

he wanted me to know him, he wanted

someone to know him.