Hooray! Dart finally got a letter from Dot. For some reason, although she hasn’t mentioned it for a long time, it made him wonder how her sore thumb was doing.

At this moment, there’s a party organizing for a 12-day leave. Dart’s pretty sore about it because most of these guys have had more leave than he has. There’s no justice in this Navy.

His eye exam today showed both eyes to be 20/20 and his color perception is 100%. Since the eyes are not the cause of his recurring headaches and dental issues have been ruled out, he’s to report to sick bay whenever another headache strikes.

The recent investment he made in a new blue jumper has turned out to be a good one. He did his laundry today and can still go out tonight while his old blues are drying. Anything that enables him to get off that ship is looking like a sure thing to him.

Hal’s letter today acknowledged that he’d lost the bet and would host a weenie roast. On December 26, he’ll have enough points for discharge. He should be getting out by January 1.

Referring to Dot’s letter where she was so disgusted by the soon-to-be-divorced housemate, he asks “What makes Erla Stratton think she knows what she’s talking about? She’s made such a flop of herself and her life.” He hopes the “kids” in the house will see how much happier Dot is and decide to follow her example before they emulate Erla.

Putting on his “wise old man” hat, he observes that Dot seems to be experiencing many of the same mixed emotions he did at 18 or 19. “It’s hard to stay ‘straight’ with stuff like that going on all around. You and I have lead what the writers of books call ‘sheltered lives.’ We were not aware of the more sordid aspects of the facts of life until we suddenly grew up into a world that had passed us by. Because we never dreamed of the tremendous prevalence of such goings-on, we are aghast and revolted by them. I try to take them in my stride, but I still show surprise when some 18-year old kid sailor makes allusions to his ‘bastard kid in ‘Frisco,’ or to the innumerable girls he claims to have conquered.”

“Yes, Dot. I think we’re just waking up to these things. They seem to have gone on in greater or less force among people of our ages for all  time. …We do worry a lot about other peoples’ wrecking their lives. They live, as you say, for the momentary pleasures, forgetting about the future. We are fortunate, Dot. Our being as we are is not entirely our own doing, but is the combined results of many circumstances. We can begin thanking ourselves when we begin to think things out for ourselves and arrive at the same conclusions we instinctively went to before. Who we are after we’re aware of things is our doing. Before that, it’s not.”

“Whenever I hear a boy talking as Erla must have been, I ask his definition of love. I almost always get the same reply: a blushing, obscene word of Anglo-Saxon origin, never used in polite mixed company. …They’ve never realized what the other kind of love is. We, who have spiritual love, who look forward to realizing our expectations of the other, sexual love, are indeed, very, very fortunate.”

In the letter Dot wrote the night he called her, she said she’d whispered “I love you” several times, but she feared that he’d not heard her. He confirms that now. “No, Dot. I’m afraid I didn’t hear you whisper that stuff. Gosh, I wish I had. I wish I could hear you say it the way you did those times when we were in each other’s arms on the davenports in our houses.”

Yes, he got his staff to answer the fan mail, but he signed the letter himself. Even did it on Navy time. “After all, I’m in the Navy on ‘me time’, aren’t I?”

He’s delighted to learn that she dreams things that would make him blush. He has such dreams as well.  “I wonder how much we’ll blush on the first night of our honeymoon? I love you sumpin’ fierce!” What an endearing man, this guy!

Dot writes the kind of chipper, newsy letter that surely is a salve to the heart of her lonely sailor. She and Ellie (The roommate she could barely tolerate early in the school year) were planning to see a movie, but decided against it. They had too little cash and too much other stuff they should be doing. Dot decided to try to finish the letter she ended so hastily last night.

She can think of a great many things women are good for besides being loved, but she’ll skip the subject because she detests bloodshed.

He was right to guess that she’ll be home around December 21. She leaves Cleveland that night and will arrive in Greenwich in the wee hours of the 22nd. How she wishes she could have the same traveling companion as she had on her trip out in September. She really loved that guy!

Spending their first married night at Sunapee would depend on what time of day they were married. Neither her parents nor Harriet and George made it up there for the first night, but it’s fun to think about it. Sadly, they have way too much time to think about it!

She’d forgotten to tell him that while she was shopping downtown with his folks, Pop suggested she pick out a sterling pattern. She found one she liked, but won’t decide for sure until he weighs in. The name of the pattern is “Lyric,” and it’s simple but elegant. She even draws a diagram of it and asks Dart for his honest reaction to it.

Mary Koehler was Lois Cain’s roommate at Andrews last fall. She had a nervous breakdown and ever since then, Dot has been trying to keep in close touch with her, “cuz’ she’s such a swell kid and has so little social life.”  She lives only a few doors down from Dart’s parents on Superior, and she works in the meat market where his mom shops.

She begs Dart not to stop writing poetry. “I really do appreciate the finer things, even though I’m not conspicuous about it in my poetry. We can’t all be born Shakespeare, you know.”

Reading his last two paragraphs of Sunday’s letters gives her goose bumps. “Oh, what I’d give for an evening such as the one you described! There never was anything like it, and never will be. Like love, I mean. I agree with you whole-heartedly that no home should be without it. Ours surely won’t.”

She began a third page only because she has too much love to fit on two pages. Her letters have been short and even duller than usual lately. “All work and no play makes Dottie’s letters duller than usual. It’s not that I’ve been working so hard, but I sure spend lots of time doing something besides playing! If I had spent more time studying for that physical science test last night, perhaps I wouldn’t have flunked it today. We haven’t gotten our grades back yet, but I’m as sure I flunked it as I am that God made green apples.”

“But I began this page for the sole purpose of telling you how much I love you and I’ve only told you once! But do you need to be told? When one is as poor a writer as I, actions speak ever so much better than words. Someday I’ll be able to offer sufficient proof of my love for you, but ’til then you’ll just have to take my word for it. I LOVE YOU!!”

She wishes he’d give her better ideas for Christmas. Those socks look silly in that big box she wrapped.