Dot’s letter today is actually two letters, written from Dart’s home in Cleveland, where she and her mother have had a nice long visit for Dot’s graduation from Andrews. She began the first letter at 1:24 PM, according to the new watch she received as a graduation gift.
As she writes, the three parents are in the Peterson’s living room looking at Dart’s baby pictures. The photos are so cute that Dot vows to throw all of her baby pictures away when she gets home, lest they pale in comparison. She feels a little guilty going through his childhood photos and laughing at them when he’s not there to defend himself, but she’s sure his vocabulary is sufficiently large to convey to her how he feels about her behavior.
His parents have been very generous in allowing Dot to read the seven letters that have arrived from Dart since she got to Cleveland. She’s hoping that today the mailman will deliver one to her that might have been forwarded from home.
When she read that he’s been on the USS Coontz, she remembered that a coworker at Franklin Simon has a brother stationed on that same ship. Unfortunately, he’s a Marine, but Dot hopes he’s a nice one, like Fred. She asked if he’d happened to meet a PFC Pfeiffer.
She explains that her mother is returning to Greenwich tonight. Just before they left to come to Ohio, she received the tragic news that her brother, Dot’s beloved Uncle Carl, had been killed in a train accident. He left several children, including Dot’s cousin Waddy, who’s in the Navy and looks very much like Dart. I grew up hearing a family story about the death of Uncle Carl: When Dot’s brother Gordon was aboard ship in the South Pacific, he was dismayed to read the news of his uncle’s death. Just as he was reading the letter about it, he heard a shipmate cry out in anguish. The other guy was at that moment reading about a dear family friend who’d also been killed in a train accident. When he and Gordon compared stories, it turned out they were both talking about Carlton Pierce!
Dot closes the first letter in order to accompany her mother to the station. She follows later that evening with her second letter of the day.
She draws a cozy picture of his family in the living room; Dart Sr. is sitting at a table, writing a novel-length letter to his son; Burke is fiddling with his camera across the room and Helen is taking a cat nap at the other end of the couch. I imagine it gave Dart great comfort to visualize Dot in familiar surroundings in the company of his family.
She describes the beautiful locket that his folks gave her as a graduation gift. As lovely as it is, the part she treasures the most, of course, is a great picture of Dart that Burke took.
Her graduation weekend went well, with 60 of the 63 classmates returning for the festivities. She already misses the girls and wistfully wonders if, or when, she’ll see any of them again. She’s a little unsettled by high school being behind her now. She doesn’t like the idea of growing up, and says it’s a sad day when a girl her age delights in hearing she looks 15 years old! She wishes especially that the war would end so that Dart would be around to grow up with her. Would he please speak to the Admiral and see if there’s anything that can be done about that?
She, of course is waiting for the day that he comes home, and she reminds him that he’s not to tell her when that day comes. She’s quite sincere about wanting to be surprised.
