Dot is jubilant to have received six letters from Dart today. Actually, she got five and her mother got one. “Hope you don’t mind if I read Mom’s too. After careful consideration I’ve decided I like the ones I get from you better than the ones Mom gets.”
She reports that while it’s cold and blustery outside, his cheery letters make it warm and cozy in her bedroom, where she’s spending the day trying to fight off her cold.
Today she wrote a letter to his family, reminding them that Greenwich still gets mail deliveries. She hopes that’ll shake a letter out of them. Now that they’ve heard from Dart, she suspects they’ll write to her.
She begs him not to apologize for the “blue” letter he wrote her. She thinks every boy who serves writes a letter like that not long after he leaves the country. She knows him well enough to believe that’s not the real Dart G. Peterson, Jr. reflected in that letter. But she also loves him enough to accept anything he might write or feel. “You don’t suppose that a little thing like a discouraging letter will ever change my feelings for you, do you?”
She knew he’d make friends wherever he went because that’s his nature. She hadn’t thought about him having friends who were Indians, but who has anything against Indians? She half expects a future letter to her to begin with “Dear Heapum Big Squaw.”
When she read about his need to sometimes wear damp clothing, she feels like she can appreciate his discomfort just a teeny bit. Sometimes at Lake Sunapee, her bathing suit doesn’t dry completely and she’s forced to squeeze into a cold and clammy suit. It’s a disagreeable feeling, so he has her sympathy.
As she finishes her response to the first of his letters she writes, “So, he closes that letter by telling me he loves me. That makes it mighty nice cuz’ I love him too and two people in love get on so much better than one person in love.” So true, Dot.
It makes her feel good to know that he hears some of the same radio broadcasts she hears. Somehow, that’ll make her feel closer to him as she listens to the programs.
A few nights ago, she had a wonderful, terrible dream about him. She saw him walking up the street in Greenwich, looking so handsome and tan (that should have been her first clue that she was dreaming). She ran to him and squeezed him as tight as possible. It felt so real to her. Then the terrible part hit her, as she awoke and found herself crushing her pillow. “The feathers were screaming for mercy.”
She’s glad he likes her photo. She hopes he continues to like it because maybe, if she’s lucky, he’ll be looking at that face for the rest of his life. Then she adds, “Subtle, huh? Like an avalanche!”
How nice that his mail calls are becoming more frequent! She will do her best to make sure that at every mail call from now on there will be a few letters from her. Does he think it would do any good to try to send him some stationery? Maybe she’ll try sending a few sheets and if they get through, she’ll send more.
She feels compelled to make a correction to his recent letter. She and her football team were not the Alley Rats. They were the Alley Cats! And of course she knows how to jump rope – everything from double-Dutch to cross hand. She may be a little rusty, but she’ll practice this spring.
She’s “mad” that his mother told him about her wearing curlers. She insists that there’s nothing cute about her when she has her hair up in them and she’s vowed that he’ll never see her that way. That’s a promise that’s hard to keep if she a) wants him to surprise her next time he visits and, b) she’s thinking they’ll get married someday. A lifetime is a long time to hide such things.
“Would anyone object if he staked a claim to the little island he described? It sounds like a perfect place for a honeymoon. But then, so would the city dump if you described it. You add color to any drab place and make me positively jealous of your surroundings when you write your graphic word pictures.”
As delighted as she is to hear that there’s not a woman within a million miles of where he is, that doesn’t give much clue to where that actually is. They think Gordon’s near Leyte. Is that close to his locale? Can he manage to fit a hint into one of his letters?
She closes by telling him that knowing him is the best thing to ever happen to her. She prays that they’ll be able to continue a life together as soon as this war is over. I think it’s lovely how easily these two talk about being together forever. A life together is an accepted fact between the two of them, even though there’s no official engagement. This commitment they have to each other will make the an engagement and even the wedding to follow simply look like a formality. They’re already joined in spirit.
