Dart begins “It’s really hard to believe that I’ve been aboard the Haggard for almost a month now. Slowly but surely, I seem to be getting adjusted to the conditions, and my curses are getting softer.”

His watches come in rapid succession, helping to make time go by faster. He stands watch with the same three guys. Their schedule is such that they get to observe both sunrise and sunset over the gray and silver sea. Every time, they think how much more beautiful that beautiful sunrise or sunset would be if only it were over Yuma, Arizona, the rolling farmlands of Nebraska, or the skyline of Boston or Cleveland. He swears that the coal smoke from Cleveland’s industries helps create the most impressive sunsets anywhere. Now there’s a homesick boy! He says that watching a lovely moon cross above the ship only serves to make one miss his loved ones more.

Last night, he had an interesting experience; he was standing watch, but thinking so intently about Dot and their future together, that he felt her physically standing beside him. “What a letdown when I reached out my hand and got it tangled in the cords of the battle telephone I was wearing.”

The guys have been hearing quite a lot about the curfew on entertainment places lately. (But he’s not yet received Dot’s letter on that topic.) He thinks the folks back home have had a rough time of things since December. He’s especially worried that the fuel shortage might have prevented Dot and her mother from traveling to Cleveland for Dot’s graduation. He truly hopes they were able to get there, and, if they did, that they had a chance to meet his parents. It seems strange that so much has happened in Dot’s life that he’s unaware of. Not only did she make it to Cleveland, but she stayed at his parents’ home for a whole week! How frustrating that mail takes so long to reach him, but I guess, in a way, it’s pretty incredible that it ever gets to him at all.

He writes that “the knotty finger of work beckons, and he must heed its call.” He misses her terribly, but way out where he is, it doesn’t do any good to mope about it. (I love that word “mope”. I think one could almost guess at it’s meaning just by the way it sounds.)

Dot writes that a mild snow fall quickly vanished under sunny skies, so one can hardly claim that March came in like a lion.

The folks at work predicted she’d get a letter from Dart today, but they were all disappointed. It certainly does her heart good to hear from him, although she can’t exactly say why. “What have you got that any other sailor doesn’t? You’ve got ‘IT!'”

She babysat for Chris and Eric Miller last night – the first time in quite a while. Eric has grown so much since she last saw him that she hardly recognized him. With long eyelashes and beautiful dark curls, he’s going to be a heart-breaker. He’s already a flirt at just eight months! His big brother Chris is also a cutie. She tells Dart that as cute as they are, they are both little devils. If you blink away for a moment, Chris has Eric’s hair in his firm grip and Eric has Chris’ kiddie-car wheel in his mouth. I think Dot secretly loves the challenge.

Tonight she’s babysitting for Carter Ford, but he doesn’t appeal to her at the moment. He’s been a little stinker all night,  but when he looks at her with his big, beautiful eyes, she’s powerless to discipline him. She confesses that her kids will be spoiled rotten, especially if they have beautiful eyes. (Well, either Dot found her backbone or none of us kids had beautiful eyes, because she never seemed to have trouble disciplining us!) She adds. “Beautiful eyes just about hypnotize me, but I guess you found that out already, didn’t you?”

She and El have gone into business. They even ran a  little ad in the newspaper: Is there a curfew in your night life? Let us help you out. We’ll take care of your children (35 cents/hr.) or assist at dinner parties (50 cents/hr.) Phone Gr 2630 after 6:30 pm.

She says they both babysit a lot, but they’d like to  be busy every night. El is saving for her wedding next year and Dot needs money for college. About the business she adds, “It ought to be loads of fun, if it works out. More variety, and I hope more cash.” This girl jokes about how lazy she is, but I’ve never known an 18-year-old willing to work as hard as she does.

Work at FS has been so slow that she’s begun taking books to read there. Now she’s enjoying “The Razor’s Edge” by W. Somerset Maugham.

There’s no more news, so she’ll close, with all her love.

No mail for Dart today and he’s feeling a little let down. Sure, he has the big stack of letters that have been arriving this week, but he’s hoping to save answering them for the coming days when he won’t have any news he can tell from the ship and when no new mail is arriving from the States for days or weeks on end.

The film they’re showing on board tonight is “Meet Me in St. Louis,” with Judy Garland and according to Dart, “a whole slew of nice tunes.” If he can’t think of much to write, he may take in the show – his first aboard the Haggard.

He asks Dot if he ever told her how this ship feels in a moderately rough sea. He doesn’t have to explain it if she’s ever ridden a Euclid Ave. street car during a rainy rush-hour. The only differences are that here, the water washes over everything, the lurching and swaying lasts much longer, and there’s not as much of a crowd.

He wishes she could see him in his foul weather gear. (I think it should be called “fowl” weather, because he’s always talking about the duckings they get.) He wears a big jacket and nice, padded ski-pants, just like the girls back home wear; also galoshes. “A day’s not complete without a ducking while we’re under way, and if we get ducked more times than we have dry suits of clothes, we wear wet ones. Salt water ruins shoes, too. I bought another pair today.”

A lot of guys out where he is wear white sailor hats that have been dyed blue. He dyed two of his today, so he must be getting “real salty.” Some destroyers have tight rules about uniforms, but his ship is quite liberal. In port – such as it is – the uniform is blue hats, dungarees and black shoes. On the ship, just about anything goes for the head and feet. He says baseball caps are quite popular among the boys, as are heavy rawhide Marine shoes. When some destroyers are in port, crew members are required to wear regulation white hats, and some are even forced to wear their white uniforms. Still, the Haggard is one of the cleanest, best looking “cans” around and the crew is mighty proud of that.

He had is picture taken today by the ship’s doctor. At the time, Dart’s hair was a mess, his face was dirty and sunburned and he had paint on his hands, arms, face, shirt and pants. Although cameras are forbidden out here, a few officers have them. He hopes he’ll get to see the photo when it’s done, but it’s hard to get film developed way out where they are. New film has to come all the way from the States.

Well, he’s surprised by how much he squeezed out of a no-news day. He’s solved the problem of the second floor of their house. How he wishes he had his drafting tools with him to make better drawings. Now, they’re just sketches. “But there’s nothing sketchy about my love for you.” I’d say after a line like that, it’s time to close this letter. And he does.

Another weekend’s passed and Dot fears she’s neglected Dart. Friday night was spent at Nancy’s house, talking about…Dart! She says Nancy may have mentioned some guy she’d known once in California, but, says Dot, “I’m afraid I was a much better listener to what I had to say.”

All day Saturday, this girl WORKED! She scrubbed her bedroom floor, windows and woodwork, vacuumed the entire third floor and stairs, cleaned up the front lawn, washed all her clothes and did three sets of dishes. At bedtime, she crashed.

This morning, the light coming through her clean bedroom windows nearly blinded her, but it allowed her to make a remarkable discovery. She actually has a cozy, comfortable bedroom, when it’s clean. She enclosed a sketch of the layout of the room, complete with a photo of Dart on every horizontal surface. That way, nearly anyplace her eyes land, there he is! She says she plans to tape another one to the ceiling so when she wakes up in the morning, that’s the first thing she’ll see.

She and El recently saw “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” and she hopes Dart gets to see it. (I’m not sure why a guy who is actually living in the war would want to see a movie about that same war, but maybe…) Anyway, she was so taken with the actress who played Mrs. Ted Lawson that she came home and cut her hair very short, like the woman in the movie. Then she tells Dart, If you do see it, notice her eyes. They sparkle like diamonds.”

She has no more paper with her at work, so she’ll have to end the letter. She added a P.S. that she got a letter from the Marine she mentioned a year ago. She got his last letter in May and never answered it, but he thought it was his turn to write. He’s in the Philippines, ‘bombing the hell out of the Japs.’ Dot says that since Dart is writing to a Marine, she thought it would be okay if she did, too.

Then, as has become her habit, she enclosed a few cute cartoons, which I’ll save for a day when no one writes a letter.

Old Faithful writes again! This letter from Dart begins with the announcement that another day has flown by quickly because he had a job to do. There’s no mention of what that job was, but he believes that keeping busy makes time pass faster, and that’s fine with him.

As he writes, some of the guys are lounging around looking at each other’s photo albums and talking about the future. They all have similar plans – marriage, a house, education and a job. Marriage seems to be of the most immediate interest to the men, but then they worry about how they’ll support a family. The worst part is they can’t discuss the priorities with their fiancees or would-be fiancees, nor with experienced older folks who might help them sort it all out. “We’ll have to wait and see what conditions are if and when we all return to our complacent life ashore, far from the Navy blue and white.”

Speaking of Navy, he remarks that in a long-ago letter, Dot said she didn’t care what he wore in his civilian life, as long as it wasn’t Navy blue. I think she meant that she didn’t want to see him in uniform after the war, but he took a different meaning. He thinks she has some aversion to the color and warns her that the only suit he owns is actually a navy blue shade. He assures her that by the time he gets released and can wear civvies, that suit won’t be good for much except the Salvation Army for a homeless veteran hero, or for shining shoes or waxing a car. I think it’s interesting that they had homeless veterans in 1945 and that Dart actually crossed out “veteran” and re-wrote “hero.” Sounds like modern times.

He comments that she seems a trifle obsessed about him meeting an Australian girl. He goes to some lengths to assure her that even if such an unlikely thing should happen, he’d be a darned fool to mess up the best thing in his life with the best girl in the world. He’s totally in love with the girl from Greenwich.

The plans for the house are nearly ready for her perusal, but he has a few questions about a bath upstairs. Do they need one? Could it be built out at a later date, if needed?

He bemoans another Easter coming when they won’t be together, but he expresses great hope that someday, they’ll celebrate all the holidays of their lives together.  He ends with “I love you only, always.”

Dot’s full of news about her new business. She and El have received about 15 calls as a result of their newspaper ad. Tonight she’s sitting for a new customer and Sunday, she and El will be serving a dinner party at the home of Stanford White, a famous architect. When they said in the ad “assist at dinner parties,” they intended it to mean serve and clean up. Instead they’re getting lots of calls to actually cater the events. With typical “can-do” verve, they’ve dived head-first into catering.

She confesses to missing him “like sixty.” It’s been 16 days since she’s heard from him. Of course, she doesn’t blame him. She only wants him to know how much she misses him. Next to him being there, his letters are the best boost to her disposition.

Although she hasn’t written to him very often due to a lack of things to write about, she did write to his family right after her trip to Ohio. She still hasn’t heard from them. She asks that when he writes to them he remind his parents that they owe her a letter. She jokes that she’ll not stand for this kind of abuse much longer.

Having finished reading “The Razor’s Edge,” she’s moved on to “Jane Eyre,” which she says she should have read ages ago when she thought she had it rough at Andrews School.

She recalls that 17 weeks ago tonight, they were enjoying a delicious spaghetti dinner together in Cleveland during Dart’s whirlwind leave. Now, as she wraps up the letter in preparation for her client to come home, she wishes that he were with her now and that they could hold hands as he walked her up the stairs.

Dart’s letter is a single page, four short paragraphs with almost no news. He asked her if she’d ever seen those cartoons when a guy was painting a floor and painted himself into a corner. She would have laughed if she’d seen him and his buddies almost do that exact same thing today. For awhile they thought they really were trapped, but then someone pointed out there was a hatch above them through which they could exit. See the advantages of living on a ship instead of in a traditional house?

The other ships around them have been getting mail every day, but the Haggard hasn’t had a delivery in four days. The injustice seems to bother Dart almost as much as not getting the mail.

He can think of nothing else to say, except that he loves her very much, and he can’t even think of a new way to say that.

With Mr. Goldstein in New York City learning what the other Franklin Simon’s has going on that they need in Greenwich, Dot is running the Young Men’s department by herself. It’s not too challenging because there have been almost no customers.

She announces that Spring is on its way and it’s much too nice a day to spend it all indoors. From her third floor window at work, she has a nice view of the countryside. In a paragraph that rivals Dart’s for its descriptive power, she tells of the trees that seem to be stretching toward the sky, ready to burst into bloom. The sky is an intense, brilliant blue strewn with light clouds that resemble careless brush strokes.

Now and then a plane flies overhead and Dot says she can’t help but pity the poor wretched souls who are terrorized by the sight and sound of airplanes. In equal measure, she’s grateful that those who live in America don’t have to be fearful of such things.

A sudden influx of customers arrives and she hastily promises to finish the letter later.

When she continues, it’s already March 10. She received her first letter from Dart today in over three weeks. It was that heart-wrenching masterpiece he wrote on Valentine’s Day. She’s happy he thought of her on this special day and tells him she re-read the poem he wrote her a year ago. She liked it even more this year. She says that being loved by him is all the Valentine she needs. “Your letter did get here and so will all the others you write, so forget to worry about that. I hope there won’t have to be too many more letters before I see you again.” She says that each letter seems to bring a little bit of him with it, so she prays he’ll continue to write whenever he has the chance.

She’s sorry to hear about his seasickness and worries there’ll be nothing left of him if that’s still happening. She says that although she’s never been seasick, she has some idea of what he’s going through and she has huge sympathy for him. Although she’s too modest or discreet to say so, I suspect she’s alluding to her monthy cramps which just about knock her off her feet.  In those days, I doubt there were many young women who would mention anything to do with menstrual issues to a male who was not her husband. How different from today when so many young people share every detail of their bodily functions through very public modes of communication!

She begs him not to apologize when he doesn’t write. She knows he has a very good reason not to. But she feels guilty. With no brass to polish, salt water spray to dodge, or battles to fight, she still doesn’t write as much as she should or would like to. She tells him that last night was the first in many that she was actually able to sit down for dinner. Usually, she races home from FS, grabs a bowl of cereal, and rushes off to her evening gig. Last night, she had a feast when she babysat at the Miller’s and tonight, she’s serving and cleaning at a huge estate 10 miles outside Greenwich. She’s ” just a lowly maid,” but ever since the money machine in their basement broke down, she’s had to resort to all sorts of indignities like work to obtain “the filthy green stuff.”

Last night Mrs. Miller gave Dot her bicycle as a graduation gift. Dot says it’s a real honey, with balloon tires and everything. Dot plans to fix it up and paint it so she can get plenty of use out of it this Spring. Mr. Miller has offered Dart the use of his bike if he gets to Greenwich during bike-riding season.

She was thrilled to get another letter from Dart today, written on March 1. It reminded her of the times when she’d hear from him nearly every day. She was so happy to see that his spirits seemed much improved since the Valentine’s letter. I know he wrote several times between February 14 and March 1. I wonder when those other letters will find their way to her.

She tells him that she, too, has often had the sensation that he is standing right beside her. It’s a hard realization that he’s not there, but it somehow makes them seem closer than the thousands of miles that separate them.

She’s eager to see his new plans for their house. Everyone she tells about them – which is everyone she knows – thinks they sound perfect. The other night, Nancy Lou asked if she’d received any new sketches.

Although it’s often nearly 1:00 before she gets ready for bed, she vows that she is not going to sleep this next week until she has written Dart at least a short note. It’s a challenge, but it also makes her feel better when she “chats” with him regularly.

“You’re in my thoughts every minute I’m awake and in my dreams when I sleep. Please finish this war in a hurry and come home. I’ll let you put a whole tray of ice cubes down my back. Oh, what am I saying?!”

She ends with a simple “Thank you for ‘being.'”