Getting another fine letter from Dart today reminded Dot how much she’ll miss his regular mail when he leaves the port where he’s been for nearly a month.

We can see how tangled and ineffective communication between two people can get when there’s a long delay between when a writer sends a letter and when the intended reader actually reads it. Exhibit A:  1) Dot writes Dart to tell him she’s sent his folks Easter flowers in his name. She thinks it’s best that he not tell his parents the flowers were her idea because it would diminish their pleasure in having received them. 2), Dart, having not yet received Dot’s letter, tells his delighted parents that the flowers which so delighted them were actually the brain child of Dot and that he had nothing to do with them. He writes to tell Dot that he told his parents the truth.  3)  Not having received word from Dart about his confession, she underscores the need for secrecy about the flowers, but, alas, it’s too  late. The cat has left the bag.  You see how this could go one for quite a number of weeks. It’s a good thing they’re not discussing strategies for world peace, or possible cures for the common cold. As long as the confusion pertains to relatively trivial matters, the world is safe.

She remarks in this letter that she fears Dart is suffering from a tropical brain disease. He had suggested that if she wanted to help with his parent’s anniversary gift, she could write to Burke and ask him to tell her what Dart had offered as a gift idea. Practical Dot points out that it would have been just as easy for Dart himself to tell Dot what his suggestion was. Also, if his mother sees a letter in Dot’s writing addressed to her younger son, she might have questions, as well she should.

Now she feels like a slacker, once again putting off that long letter she’s promised. She’s had a headache for two days and believes sleep might help. She suspects the headache is a result of needing new glasses, but she must pay off one doctor before visiting another. “I feel I’m aging fast. You’ll no doubt come home to a toothless, gray-haired bag of bones and hank of hair. (Just to leave you with happy thoughts of the future.) And to think that a thing like me could ever know what it’s like to have a god-like man like you!”

Here’s another chipper letter from Dot. She just received the letter containing snapshots of Dart taken by the ship’s doctor. She loves them! He looks so tan and healthy. She says that in one of the poses he looks just like his father. “Good looking man – your Pop.”

She reluctantly appreciates the warning that these frequent letters from him will soon stop. Being forewarned will not make it any easier for her to see the mailman come and go with no mail for her. She shudders to think what it would be like to be writing to a man who didn’t like to write back, or wasn’t very good at the art. She’s very spoiled, but so very happy that her fate was to fall for a guy who loves to write and does a good job with it.

Dot asks if he is able to keep the letters that the censor rejects so that after the war, his family can read about what he was doing when he couldn’t write. Maybe he could keep a journal or something, because she’s so eager to hear all about his life at sea.

Did he receive the package she sent him just before Easter? If it arrives later, he should just throw it out. It was a box of cookies, specially wrapped for sending overseas. She’d also included a checker board and some other games. She’s sure the cookies would be inedible by now.

This week Harriet and George took in a 16-year old girl as a foster child. Dot is going to invite her to a movie this weekend as a way of getting to know her “foster niece” better.

“I’ve been looking for some pin-up pictures to send you, but you boys from the Haggard must have gotten all of them. Or aren’t I going to the right source? My opinion of you will drop a whole millionth of a fraction if you could tell me where the best source is.”

She finishes by saying that she’s fallen asleep twice while writing this letter.

When Dot told her mail man that there would soon be a lull in the letters he brings her from her sailor, he surprised her with another one from him. Then he told her that all of the mail carriers in Greenwich were discussing who was the most consistent letter-writer of all the service men sending letters to Greenwich. Dart won by a mile! Now Dot hopes he’s getting as many letters in returned delivered to the ship.

Does Dart really like her whistle, or is he teasing her about wanting to hear it again? “I’m constantly being reminded that ‘whistling girls and cackling hens always come to the same bad ends.'” She knows it’s not very ladylike to whistle like she does, but sometimes it slips out without her thinking. I think Mom’s powerful “wolf whistle” was one of her attributes her three children were the proudest of when we were quite young. All our friends wished their moms could whistle like that.

She met Harriet’s foster daughter today. Her name is Helen Buckley and she’s sweet 16 and quite pretty. Dot invited her to spend the night soon, but Helen hasn’t made up her mind yet. Dot supposes she has lots of her own friends she’d like to spend time with. I’m a little surprised that Harriet has such an old foster child, since she’ll only be 26 herself this week.

Speaking of Harriet’s birthday, Dot says that starting with that celebration, there’s a family birthday every month until February. Then there are anniversaries, showers, weddings, Mother’s and Father’s Days, etc. “Big families are wonderful, but they’re expensive.”

With love and kisses, she signs off. There are no letters from either party tomorrow, so I’ll be back again on the 27th.

Dot’s letter begins in a jubilant mood. “Boy! Oh, Boy! Three super letters from you and a super letter from your mom today. That’s the way I like to start off a Monday morning – meet the postman on my way to work and spend my first hour of work reading what I collected from the postman. It makes me feel like singing, and if I didn’t have a hard enough time finding customers already, I think I’d break out in song for sure.”

Isn’t it cool that she could collect letters from the postman so early in the morning and again when she came home for lunch? Back in the day when the mail brought more than ads and pleas for money, wouldn’t it have been fun to get two deliveries a day?

She begins to answer these “precious documents” in the order they were written. From the April 17th letter, she sees that Dart has a little celebrity crush on the newest starlet named Lauren Bacall. “Say, what is it that Lauren Bacall has that I couldn’t find plenty of use for? That’s one woman who seems to have made a hit with every kind of man.”

She assumes Dart got sunburned the day he wrote this letter. She hopes it was more evenly distributed than the burn he got last July in Greenwich. As she recalls, it was mostly his wrists where they extended beyond is sleeves that got bright red then. “The color does become you, though. So much more so for you, when it comes from without, than on me when it comes from within.” (I think she means blushing.)

She scolds him gently for telling his parents that it was she who sent the Easter flowers and not Dart. She knows it took away half their pleasure from the gift. “So be it. It’s done now. But hereafter, do me a little favor. To put it bluntly, keep your mouth shut, or in this case, your pen still, PLEASE!”

For his letter from the 19th, she says she hopes he gets his fill of gun shooting while he’s out there, because that’s the last thing she ever wants to see. Guns scare her! Seriously, Dot – the type of guns Dart is shooting “out there” are hardly the kind he could bring home as a souvenir! He’d need a flat bed railroad car to move one from place to place.

As for Ernie Pyle, she’s sure that Dart’s writing style is every bit as good as his was. “It’s not ability you’re lacking, Dart. It’s experience. But don’t think you have to go through all that he went through to be like him. I wouldn’t like that at all.”

She’s impressed that he’s up to 160 pounds. She loves him just the way he was when she saw him last, but every pound he gains gives her more to love.

“Oh-oh! Here comes the April 20th letter, or ‘Why Dot Should NOT Join the WAVEs!’ There’s little point in discussing it further, since she’s prohibited from joining anyway, but she appreciates that he cares enough to give her his honest opinion. “Thank you, my Darling, for caring enough to speak you piece (sic) and for guiding me in the right way.” She values his opinion so much that with every decision she faces, she finds herself asking “Which way would Dart decide?” She’s confident things worked out the way they’re supposed to, as they usually do in life, but she still hopes to do something useful someday.

As for kissing and making up, there’s no need – unless it’s for the “sheer joy of kissing.” He did not hurt her feelings. In fact, his carefully worded letter made her prouder and more in love with him that she was before. She wants to be a better woman for him because she knows he deserves the best. Once again she cautions him to stop building her up in his mind, lest the reality of her crushes his illusions when he gets home.

She wraps up quickly by telling him how proud she is of his grades and filling him in on a movie she and Nancy saw last night called “The Keys to the Kingdom,” with a young actor named Gregory Peck.

“I’m going to bed, but not before kissing your picture and praying that soon there’ll be no more ‘ifs’ to contend with.”