The playful mood of Dot’s letter last night has been replaced by melancholy. She is acutely lonesome for Dart, missing him even more now that she knows he’s left the country. She was so sad today that she called Dart’s mother and had a nice long chat. Helen advised Dot not to get too lonesome, but that’s something she has no power to control. She walks around all day with a huge lump in her throat.
“i have no business writing this kind of letter and I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for doing it. Perhaps if you didn’t always lend such a sympathetic ear to my many imaginary troubles, I wouldn’t be so free to deposit them on your shoulders. Thank you, my Darling, for being everything you are and for putting up with me when I get into moods like this.”
She went to church this morning, hoping it would help her get a hold on herself. In some ways, she feels better, but she still doesn’t understand why things have to be the way they are for such a long time until they are married. She loves him so much she finds it hard to think clearly about anything. School seems to be a complete waste of time and effort. Try as she might to change her attitude about it, she simply can’t.
She writes about one teacher who is very sympathetic to her and is working to help Dot out. “Miss Van Campen is our education teacher who has had a lot of psychology and understands people very well. A few days ago, she asked us to fill out a questionnaire about ourselves. Among the questions was one asking why we had chosen teaching as a profession. I left that space blank and then asked her about it after class. I explained to her that I had decided I did not want to teach as a lifetime job. She asked if she had scared me off already, but then she noticed my ring and saw the light. She asked me my greatest ambition, and I replied it was to be a wife and mother, and a good one of both. She assured me it was the best ambition for a girl to have and said she’d like to help me attain that goal. She advised that next quarter I should be a special student and take mainly courses that will help me in building a home – plus a lot of phys. ed. so that I could do recreational work the first few years that we’re married.”
Her conversation with the teacher gives her some confidence that she won’t have to fill her schedule with a lot of junk classes in which she has no interest.
She enjoyed his great 10-page letter that she got yesterday. It was quite funny, but she’s in no mood to do it justice. She wishes she could talk with him. She wishes their parents were more enthusiastic about a wedding in 1947. She wishes his mother really had facts to back up her hunch that the Navy would let Dart off the ship in San Diego and allow him to leave for good. The lovely handkerchief he gave Dot recently has been getting a good workout and it brings her comfort.
Although she has no new ways of expressing her love for him, she’s confident that he knows exactly what she means.