The main point of Dart’s letter today is to describe the harsh sailing conditions of the last 24 hours. There have been no storms, but plenty of very rough water. He’s been unable to even think about eating more than a few saltines since dinner the night before. He hopes that’s enough sustenance to carry him until noon tomorrow when they hit the Panama Canal Zone.
Last night he awoke several times with his hind quarters hanging out in space and his arms tightly gripping the chains that were holding his bunk. “This morning the decks were littered with the limp forms of green-skinned sailors. …I’m no rough water sailor, never was, and hope to never try to be again.”
He briefly described a passage way that was designed to help the crew cross the ship in rough seas. “Suddenly, we find out feet against one wall and the head bumping against the other. You can never be sure whether it’s you or the world that’s falling down. But I know. It’s me. I fell for you in 1943 and I’ve been that way ever since.”
# # #
Dot starts her short letter in the morning before heading to campus for her daily classes. Her education class is becoming her favorite subject – partly, she suspects, because it meets only two days a week. Mostly, though she likes the teacher and is fascinated by the class discussions on education styles and psychology. She has an assignment to visit an elementary class in the training school and write a theme on the teaching methods she observes while she’s there.
After she finishes this letter, she must write to her parents and to Cynthia, iron a pile of laundry and do homework. She admits that homework shouldn’t come last, but alas, that’s where she always puts it.
It was bitterly cold on her walk to campus today. So cold that her breath froze instantly into little ice crystals. If Dart doesn’t believe her, she challenges him to come home and check it out for himself!
At his mother’s advice, she has been randomly pulling one old letter out of her stack every day to read while waiting for new letters to arrive. Today’s sample was one he wrote in October in which he said that three years was the best estimate he could figure as to when they could get married. “In three months, that estimate has dropped to a year and a half. That doesn’t make the future look nearly so distant, does it?”
Apologizing for the brevity of this letter, she tells him that every time she puts a penny in their bank, she checks it off mentally as one less worry they’ll have in the future. “You know, we’ve gotten rid of lots of worries since September.”