Dart begins this letter innocuously enough. He was surprised when his non-churchgoing father asked this morning if it would be okay if he accompanied Dart to church. Of course Dart was pleased to have his company, as they slipped into the last two available seats in the sanctuary. He also tells Dot the times of the Sunday services at the Congregational Church this weekend, suggesting they try to attended the earliest one. He took his watch to have the crystal replaced and is using an old pocket watch in its place.
Then the mood of the letter changes. Its contents are so deeply personal, so incredibly intimate, that I hesitate to even comment on them. I will tread gently.
His first paragraph of this part of the letter sets the mood. It’s also possible to quote this passage without violating the tender privacy of these young lovers. “Golly I’ve been lonesome tonight. I wish our tires were in shape to make a trip to Kent. I surely would have been there. A nice moon, a nice balmy night are just made for nice walks in the country with the nicest thing of all – a girl like you. (Don’t place the wrong emphasis on ‘thing’). Of course, a girl like you might be okay for other guys, but none of that ‘like’ stuff for me. It’s got to be YOU, or no one. I’m getting tired of it being no one, too. I’d much rather spend my time with you.”
He continues by telling Dot that he believes she expects a visitor while she is in Cleveland next week. He sympathizes because he knows she considers this visitor to be problematic, especially when she’s away from home. He also frets that the visitor brings her such terrible pain and discomfort for a couple of days. He recalls how alarmed he was in the past when she dozed off in his arms and murmured for her mother in her sleep, such was the level of her pain. He only hopes that having him around brings some measure of comfort during those miserable days each month.
And then he begins his written reminiscence of that Friday of Dot’s spring break – a time they have both eluded to in their letters. He speaks with such tender passion and awe about an incident that happened between them that the reader knows it was perhaps the second most meaningful event of his life thus far, after meeting Dot.
I suppose modern readers might say that much of his letter was his attempt to “process” the magnitude of the event. He writes an allegory of a city surrounded by a very high wall, into which is placed a single glorious gate. The wall is not too high to scale, and indeed, many people enter the city by doing just that. Still, in Dart’s story, he and Dot approached the wall together, long ago, and quite far from the gate. They vowed that someday they would enter the city, hand-in-hand through the gate. Yet on that Friday night, they climbed high enough up the wall to glimpse the city within. Lots of people were urging them to climb over and join them, while others urged them to come through the gate. Dot and Dart had long ago committed to the gate, and he knows deep in his heart that they will do just that.
He wonders if their actions have broken the trust of some people who love them both, but he has no regrets. The intimacy of those actions have given proof of their abiding love for each other.
“Every effort I can muster, and I know the same is true for you, is being used to find and follow that allegorical path to the gate, so that we can both enter that gate, arm in arm, without looking back and without either of us watching the other coming from outside the gate to met the other within. I’m so proud of you, Darling. That pride inside me sobers me at times. It’s something I’ve known from the start, instinctively, yet I was thrilled to hear it from you the first time, and I will always thrill to hear it. I have deserved it, thus far myself, and for that, I am proud of myself, too. Thank you, Dot, for being as you are, and for loving me and for accepting my love for you. I can think of no greater honor than to be in love like that.”
# # #
Dot’s letter today is actually written on a tiny note card, with a picture on the front of a sweet girl ironing a basket of clothes. Inside, she writes that she and Phyll served a firemen’s banquet today and they each made $2.05 in tips for 45 minutes of work. If she adds up all her tips from the past 48 hours, her mother is $4.80 closer to Ohio. (Shhh, it’s a secret from Mrs. Chamberlain.) When you add the $.40 and hour that Robin Hood is paying her, she’ll be in the clover in no time. She’s sending along $2.00 so that Dart can buy his mother flowers or a plant for Easter. How she looks forward to attending church with Dart next Sunday!
She loves him so much that she can think of nothing else. That’s what makes it so hard to study for her upcoming tests.