Dart hopes that with this long, single-spaced typed letter he will have finally answered all of his back letters from Dot. But first, he’ll get her caught up on what’s happening with him.

He wrote a letter to the secretary of Sigma Tau Delta today, informing her that he was accepting membership in the organization. (No mention of what the organization actually is.)

Last night was his model railroad club meeting at Larry Greasel’s home. After the group broke up, he sat around with Larry, Homer and Dick Robinson, chewing the fat until nearly 2:00 AM. That explains why he didn’t write to her last night.

His little green and red and black engine was the hit of the meeting. “I think it’s a fine looking little piece of machinery, and the gentlemen sort of backed me up in my opinion.  It looks almost like a three-dimensional Currier and Ives print.”

When he should have been doing  homework yesterday afternoon, he accepted an invitation to the home of Rand Manning, a member of the Skyline staff. Rand is a playwright for the Cleveland Playhouse and his stepfather is the musical director for the same place. The two of them share a very lush bachelors’ apartment, complete with a 70-year-old “Negro house-boy named Claude.” Two other members of the Skyline staff were also in attendance. The afternoon turned out to be more pleasant than Dart had anticipated.

“They have a Capehart radio-phonograph that is about the size of a pipe-organ, and more record albums than most good record stores. They have all sorts of music, but the stuff that is predominant is musical comedy stuff, French, German, and Russian popular songs,  American and Gypsy folk music, and a most complete selection of symphony records.

The apartment is most unusual for people to be living in. It looks more like a movie set than anything else. A gray woolly tufted carpet covers every room but the kitchen, wall to wall. A baby grand piano sits in one of the three living rooms, which were formerly living room, dining room, and sun room, but they’re all fixed up in the same style now. Some furniture is modern, some period. One large bookshelf is full of books, and several are filled with records.

Flowered drapes hang at the windows on little slides, like theater curtains. Paper in the living rooms is like a broad tweed effect, in gray. The walls of the two bedrooms are very dark blue! Rand’s room is full of books, records, and paintings. He has a small radio-phonograph in his room. Most of the paintings in the apartment were done by Rand.

There are two sleek, well-fed cats in the apartment, named Boswell and Johnson. (Mr. Boswell and Miss Johnson.) Boswell is an enormous creature. Johnson is small and black, and terribly shy.

We had a buffet-style supper, complete with drinks before, and demitasse afterward. Quite, quite, you know. Some joint. It jarred Dick and Jim and me considerably.

Now, to Dot’s letters. March 12 – “It sounds like the phone co. girls are faithful to their co-workers. You better stay on there. It might be a good way to furnish our house. Some brawl!” (Did she go to some kind of over-the-top bridal shower for a co-worker? Can’t really say for sure.)

He suggests they could build a shelf at above the head of their bed to hold a radio. He likes a nightly radio program in Cleveland called “This is Goodnight,” which plays instrumental versions of soft, popular songs. Sometimes an actor reads the lyrics while the music plays in the background. “When you’re not here, a pretty program like puts me in that ‘certain’ mood.  Just between us (and don’t think much could get between us if we listen to a radio as we lay in bed), if you were here, it would not take that program to put me in the mood. I think, though, that it’ll be fun just to experience these programs together.”

Jumping to a different topic, he says he hopes he doesn’t tip over the canoe like he nearly did the last time. “That would be too bad if the radio were in it. Dot, I want to go out in the canoe with you and I’m not worried that you’ll let any harm come to me. I don’t want to do anything which would cause it.” He suggests they go out often enough that he will eventually get comfortable with it. He hopes she recalls that he does okay when the water is shallow enough that he can stand up if he gets into trouble.

He wonders if her hair will still be very short in June so she doesn’t have to put it up every night. As he recalls, it was quite short when they met, and he thought it was very becoming.

March 9 letter: No, he’s not quite a senior yet, but he should be after this semester.

No, he has no idea why Fred and Bettie broke up. She was as peculiar in her own way as Fred, and they must have just decided they couldn’t stick it out any longer.

Today is the day that Betty and Gordon will be moving into their own house. Dart thinks it’s too  bad that Dot found reason to change her mind about her brother being a nearly perfect person. He fears that he and Gordon might get into a few sharp-word conversations if they were to spend much time together. Kidding is fine, as long as everyone knows when to stop, but when it’s used to bully or make others angry, it’s gone too far. He hopes Dot doesn’t take it too seriously when people say she’s just like her brother.

He makes a suggestion for their own future family. He proposes they never set one kid up as an example for the others, or compare their children when the children can hear them. All that seems to do is promote discord among siblings. He also suggests she make a list of her personality traits and then see which of her family members have all of those same traits. If she compares all of her family, he suspects she’ll see that each of them is as different from each other as she feels she is from all of them. Besides, why should she be just like her family. Isn’t it better to have her own personality?  Why should she be an exact duplicate of everyone, or anyone, in her family?

He asks her if the phone employees go on with their strike, will she have to quit her job? If so, why? He surely wouldn’t want her to work during the strike, even if she doesn’t believe in the cause, because that could lead to physical injury. Is there any way she could sit out the strike but still have her job back when the strike was over?

Pop called recently. He’s very homesick, and being an extreme introvert, he’s not doing too well living in a ward. Being with other people, especially strangers, makes him nervous. “I wish something could be done to help him, but things are not so optimistic when the illness is partly due to a mental attitude. I’ve been afraid that his attitude about meeting people or going away from home would force him to find a reason he couldn’t come to Greenwich in June. Not an excuse, but the reason, if any should surface, would be brought on by his mental outlook, and would be real.”

Dart goes on to explain that his father’s fear of meeting new people or facing new situations is a lot like his own fear of the water; purely baseless, half irrational, hard to avoid. People afflicted that way can either say “I can’t”, or just plunge in and try to make things work out. At his father’s age, a plunge would probably be futile, but at Dart’s age, it just might do some good, he thinks.

He discusses his growing worry that part of his father’s problem is watching his own sons get ahead in their lives in ways he would have loved to do, but was never able to. Pop was forced to quit high school to support his mother while his brother Guy was away at college.  He loves books and knowledge, and he’s proud to see his sons getting good educations, but he is so sensitive about his lack of education, that he may also resent his sons’ successes. Dart suspects that his father feels inadequate when it comes to conversing with strangers. He fears they will find him unworthy, and he already feels that way about himself. Dart says it all comes down to pride.

He thinks Dot’s idea of giving her tax refund to her parents is very fair.

March 3 – How he loved seeing those three rows of x’s, o’s, *’s and !’s. They reassure him that she is every bit as eager to share the real things those symbols represent as he is.

If this is not the longest letter he’s ever written (nearly 3,000 words) it is surely the longest letter he’s written today. He still has four letters and a poem to answer, but for now, he must earn a living, secure their future, eat a meal and mop the kitchen floor – not necessarily in that order.

In his own hand, he writes a good night message, saying he wishes he could come home to her tonight, and not have to sit on the edge of the couch when he kisses her good night.

In his PS, written after he gets home from work, he adds that he misses her terrible. Logically, he knows that June is not that far off, but every minute is an eternity.

Dart writes what he claims is a very difficult response to a discouraged letter he got from Dot today. From his answer, I think we can pick up the gist of her letter.

How he wishes he didn’t act so smart all the time. Dot is the only one who listens to him, so he tends to over do his thinking and his writing to her. He spews off in a tangent, and she ends up feeling unworthy, or somehow lacking in the appropriate level of intellect. She has expressed misgivings about not going back to college; perhaps she fears he’ll out distance her and become bored.

He believes if she were still at Kent and could see him more often, two things would happen. First, she wouldn’t have this inflated image of his virtues that are the result of having just his letters and her memories to cling to. (The real Dart’s warts would be more easily seen.) Second, she would see that he struggles with his classes. There’s not much that comes easily to him about his class work.

He tells her that if she truly has regrets about not return to college, the best thing she can do is to express those feelings. He believes if she holds them in, they become magnified. If she feels intellectually inferior, he suggest she read more, starting with books about subjects that interest her instead of someone else’s idea of worthwhile books. I squirmed a little when he suggested that magazines were more her style. Maybe she could read about decorating a home, or about rearing children – something she might find interesting. Had she ever thought of checking with the library? Man, that sounds patronizing and condescending to me, but I suspect if Dot felt the same we, she quickly forgave his oafishness.

I kept expecting, as I read this lecture, that he would assure her that she could indeed go back and finish college. Maybe there would be a discussion about waiting until he was finished so that he could go to work and support them. Perhaps he’d suggest that after children, she could complete her degree. But he brought up no such idea. I suppose that in 1947, women with college degrees were such anomalies that he never gave her education much thought. Still, it would have been nice if he’d assured her of that possibility if she ever wanted it.

Dot came from a family that valued education. Her mother, a graduate of Wellesley, was a bit of an intellectual snob. It’s no wonder that Dot felt self-conscious about her intellect. She was too young and too modest to recognize her own innate wisdom or value her vast practical knowledge.

Dart admits that three years of college has not made him feel any better prepared to build a career or support a wife than he ever was. He hopes he’s wrong.

But this interminable letter is just getting started. He goes on for pages more about how foolish she is to fear that they are not perfectly matched, because nobody is perfectly matched! He writes as though she is a naive child with such silly notions as he rambles on about the necessary disillusionment that comes in the early months of marriage as the couple gets to know each others flaws so well. He also rambles about that being natural and expected, but how most couples weather it and grow closer in their more complete knowledge of each other. Oh, Dart, please put a sock in it!

The icing on the cake is when he gives her what amounts to a class assignment when he offers ideas on how she should respond to his letters. If she agrees with the points he raises, tell him why she agrees, and expand on his thoughts. If she disagrees, speak up and say so. Explain why, and offer counterpoints of her own. Sigh! I’ve never been so happy to see 12 pages come to an end, as they do, with the following statement. If I can just make you feel more secure, to live more satisfactorily to yourself, then all my love will not have been in vain. Oh, Darling, I hope I’ve made you feel better, but I fear it’s worse.

Dart feels that if he doesn’t get some good sleep tonight he’ll pay a price. He thinks the price might be another cold because he feels something coming on.

For all his scolding in last night’s letter, he only addressed one page of her recent letter. “I don’t feel like scolding tonight, even though I have a lot more I’d like to say about your letter.” (Why would one adult ever “scold” another adult?)

He realizes how bad his letter might have sounded. He also suspects that the mood she was in when she wrote the letter that triggered his may have been fleeting. He imagines that if he spouts off in a similar fashion a couple of days from now, it may not do much harm – or, he suspects, much good, either.

Pop is coming home on Thursday! Dart will have to cut journalism class in order to get him, but that means the family should  be at home when Burke arrives for the weekend. The remaining question is whether they can take good enough care of the old man to prevent a return trip to Crile Hospital. Yesterday, Pop admitted that his troubles are mostly his own fault. Dart sees that as a positive sign.

The results of last week’s Spanish test were better, but not as good as they needed to be. Now he only has four more tests to bring his grade up. The results in Mr. Carter’s literature class were quite gratifying for Dart, for a change. He got a much-needed B+ on the test.

He comments that it’s nice of El and Norm to help out for the night of the wedding. Whatever it is they’ve committed to, Dart thinks it’ll help them make a clean getaway. He asks Dot what they might do to guard against any foul play from family or wedding guests that might interfere with their first night together? He suggest sleeping pills.

She’s worried about him wondering why he ever married her, and he reminds her they are both likely to wonder that in the first year. That’s all part of their “growing up” together, and he likes the thought of growing up with her.

Dart returns on the 20th.

Dart Sr. finally came  home from the hospital today, but Dart Jr. wasn’t able to drive him home. Everyone thought it would be better if he avoided sick people with his 102 degree fever! Yes, our boy is sick again for the third time in two months.

But the good news is that Pop looks, feels and sounds better than he has in years. He finally understands that he must eat more to stay healthy. When Dart and his mother were discussing Pop the other day, Helen came up with an apt analogy for her husband; she says he was cut from a bolt of blue serge, but has been trying to provide blue denim service for years. He must accept that he is serge and avoid the tough and rigorous life of denim. Can you tell she’s a seamstress?

Dart doesn’t have is list of wedding invitees with him, but he asks Dot to add his Uncle Art if he’s not already included. Art may be one way for all the Burkes to get out to Connecticut for the wedding.

The Petersons discovered the other day that the front door lock on their apartment would open with any key that was stuck in it. “A locksmith is performing an operation on it now. He’s going to make us six new keys, too. That, my Sweet, includes one for you! Looks like you’ll have to get used to living in a locked house. ” (Remember, the Chamberlains never lock their big house in Greenwich.)

He goes on to say that home break-ins, armed robberies, and assaults are on the rise in Cleveland. Cops dressed as women are walking the streets to try and catch purse-snatchers. The city has seen a huge uptick in the number of gun permits requested for the protection of private homes. Dart fervently hopes Dot will not have to take a job that forces her to walk hope at night because the streets of Cleveland have become too dangerous.

Dot must have sent a brochure for the hotel the newlywed couples hope to stay in on their wedding night. He thinks it looks fine, but asks a few questions: Will the $6.00 room with breakfast be enough to honor the auspicious occasion? How late will they hold the reservation if the couples arrive late at night? When she says El and Norm will also stay there, he hopes she means in a separate room! Also, why would she suggest they get an early start to Sunapee the next morning? Dart hopes to get a full eight hours of sleep after “everything else.” (Note: Sometimes Dart sounds to me like such an old man. What 23-year-old man worries about starting his honeymoon well-rested?) Also, is Dot sure that some of her fun-loving relatives won’t follow them from the reception with silly pranks on their mind?

“I hope you realize that with Monday’s letter, my tendency to give advice got loose, in spite of what I like to call ‘my better judgement.'”

He’s disappointed he didn’t get to the flower show this year at Public Hall. “They had another little house built in it, this time in the basement. They dumped five tons of dirt on the floor for the circus, piled it up for the flower show, and are now spreading it out for the sportsman show. A week after that, it’ll all be cleared away for the Metropolitan Opera. We love our Public Hall!”

“And I love you!”

Throughout this rough day with what he calls the “phloo,” Dart was thinking how nice one of Dot’s back rubs would feel on his achy muscles.

Looking over her most recent letter, he’s decided he really likes the Hotel Green where they hope to spend their wedding night. Although he loves making such plans with her, he thinks he’ll feel awkward checking in to a hotel that night. “Everybody knows what goes on in there.”

It was such a sweet poem she wrote to him on a day when he was feeling particularly blue. How he loves those nice gestures of hers! His father is also grateful for all the letters and cards she sent him during his weeks at Crile Hospital.

He  has another Ralston box top to mail. Does she still want them? On that note, I asked Mom if she could recall why she was collecting these things back then. She immediately answered that she used them to purchase their first set of everyday flatware – a silver plate design that complemented their sterling “Candlelight” pattern. I remember she and Dad used that flatware well into my teen years before replacing it with a stainless steel set.

He’s sorry that her boss would not let her change vacation dates. It would have been nice if she could have “vacated” with her friend Cynthia.

I’m getting all turned inside out with belly rumbles again, and believe me, it’s not at all conducive to lovemaking. So, if you’ll excuse me, honey, I’ll stop writing and just lie here wanting you.

That flu must have really laid him low because we don’t hear from Dart again until March 23. I’m glad we don’t have to wait too much longer until Dot’s letters resume on this blog.

Last night, Dart was feeling a little better, so he used all of his reserve strength to do a little homework. He feels a little better tonight.

His buddy Tom called tonight, but Dart’s mother said her son was too weak to come downstairs for the phone. Tom asked how the wedding plans were going and he left a message that he’ll be stopping by for a visit later this week.

“Speaking of plans, I see by Emily Post’s column this morning that black patent leather shoes must be worn with full dress. Now I know I’ll have to keep some sort of a job, right up to the very last week. Between what I want and what I must have, things are looking like little red figures in my little book, and I haven’t even spent any money yet!”

He stews about the $13.00 in lost wages and a week of lost school work because of this siege by the flu. He wonders how he’ll ever get caught up with classes. “You told me to tell you when I had any worries so you could worry for me. Well, commence worrin’, honey!”

He’s watching his dreams of graduating cum laud fly out the window. He’s convinced that it’ll take more effort than he has left in him to bring any of his grades up as high as B, and he fears much worse.

Another worry he has is how he’ll finish the third floor for them before the wedding. His high aspirations have diminished to a fervent hope that he’ll be able to merely wash the walls and sweep the floor. He asks her what they’ll use to buy furniture, cabinets, wiring, and whatever else is needed to make a home. He’s sure they can borrow some basics from his folks, but it’s a far cry from what he’d hoped for as the beginning of their life together.  He refuses to give any space at all to those hideous chairs that are already up there. They are uglier than he can bear, and uncomfortable to boot.

Pushing his worries to the side for a moment, he reports that Burke’s former girlfriend Edie is engaged to be married. Also, his cousin Lolly, in town to nurse her mother through pneumonia, stopped by for a visit last night. Because of her little ones at home, she didn’t climb the stairs to Dart’s sick room, but before leaving, she hollered up “Bye, Dart. Happy honeymoon!”

If he ever would decide to become a hermit, now would be the time. He already has a five-day growth of beard. With his black sideburns, pale mustache, and red chin, he resembles a calico cat. “I was afraid for a while that you would object, but as far apart as we are now, the beard would have to get mighty long before it would bother us both at the same time.”

Back to their living situation, he hopes they’ll get a little place of their own as soon as possible – an opinion I’m sure Dot shares. He hopes they can live on a quiet street with big trees and friendly neighbors. He sometimes doubts there are any quiet streets in this city, especially ones not populated by a bunch of drunkards, hooting and shouting all night long. “I’d like to live close enough to Cleveland for its cultural advantages, in some little town near here. I want a home to be a place of peace, rest, quiet and comfort; not of noisy, nerve-wracking bustle, or of such super-neatness that it’s not homey.”

He recalls that Dot once commented that she’s not s super housekeeper. He doesn’t think he’ll mind because whatever kind of housekeeper she is, she’ll be a change from his mother. “She’s doing better than most women could, but I’m ready for a change.” He remarks that with the pressures of her job and her worry over her husband, she’s not doing much to make the house cheerful or the meals appetizing. (Here’s an idea, Dart: Why don’t you do a little more of the housekeeping and a little less evaluating how your mother is doing?) How grateful I am that he “outgrew” his chauvinism long before I was aware of it. No doubt Mom helped round out the edges in a hurry.

He asks if Dot ever sold her bike. Although the money would be nice, he can also imagine the day when they might wake up to beautiful weather and decide to go on a long bike ride together. How they’d get the bike from Greenwich to Cleveland is not mentioned.  “I’ve missed that kind of fun, and maybe you haven’t had as much as you’d like, either. What better way of having it than by awakening to each others kisses and caresses and deciding to take a long ride?”

“Remember the night of the full moon at Sunapee? How we sat on the bench at the head of the dock? We shivered, both from cold and from desire. I want you as much right now as I did then, Darling. Goodnight, dear. I love everything about you.”

“I often wonder how we’ll exist until June 20, or seven days earlier when I expect to be seeing you next.”

Dart was out of bed all day today, but his mother is home with the flu. He’ll return to school on Wednesday, just in time to get loaded up with school work for next week, when the school vacation starts. He was hoping to buy a ticket to Greenwich and surprise Dot at home, but the $30 is too valuable and scarce these days. He’ll also need the time for school work.

As per her request, he will look around Cleveland for a white Bible for her to carry for the wedding. If she finds one in Greenwich, will she let him know? Also, will she find out if he can rent black patent shoes in her part of the world. He doesn’t think he can do that in Cleveland. If he has to buy a pair, that means he’ll need to forego something else he really needs.

He’s proud of her thriftiness in acquiring so much of their everyday flatware with box tops., telling her it’s a “swell idea.”

He’s very content with the “blanket exchange.” He’s been sleeping under the blanket she left in Cleveland, but he wonders if the blanket misses its former bed companion as much as he does.

He comments on Dot’s news about her friends from Kent. He wonders how Ellie and her beau have managed not to have a baby yet, and he asks if Janie left Kent State.

There’s a mighty wind raging outside which somehow makes him miss Dot more. He’s so lonesome for her that all he can think about is that which should not be talked about. “Can’t say it. Gotta do it!”

He cautions her to take care of her cold and don’t let it turn into flu.

This is a long letter written in short spurts over three days.

Dart lists as his “recreational activities” for this evening as:  study for tomorrow’s Spanish test, compose, type, and mail three short pieces for Miss Talmage’s prose class, and a “super-duper” book report for American Lit. Then he must begin on next week’s assignments.

Dot’s check will bring their savings account balance to just over $72.00. He’s pinching all his cash pretty tightly these days so that he’ll be able to pay for the honeymoon. He hopes to make a small deposit into their penny account soon.

He reports that the snowfall in Cleveland has set a record for the deepest snow in March. Then he bids Dot good night and ends the first section of the letter.

On March 26, he writes quite a lot about the phenomenal weather they’ve seen over the last 24 hours. Warm air with lots of rain, plummeting temperatures leading to icy streets, wind gusts high enough to overturn cars and topple power lines, blizzard-like snow, followed by sustained high winds for hours. The city is nearly paralyzed.

He feels like he flunked his Spanish test and he learned he got a low C on last week’s psych test. He feels beaten and ready to throw in the towel. He’s going to bed because he’s too tired to read his English assignment and remember any of it.

He’s back at it on March 27, with more tales of the recent weather. The winds were so strong that if they’d been on the east coast, they would have been called a hurricane. All public transportation came to a halt. Fortunately the snow forced a delay of his journalism mid-term when the professor got stuck at home.

Tonight in his prose workshop, Miss Talmage read two of Dart’s pieces aloud to the class. She likes his presentation of dialects and speech peculiarities. One of the pieces she selected to read was a character sketch of Mr. Schmidt, State Editor at the Plain Dealer. That same piece was also selected for publication in the Skyline. That must have been a nice example of his writing, making me wish a copy of that issue of the Skyline had survived with the letters. Dart is delighted that people with critical skills have finally recognized that he has a certain style of writing that has some merit. Miss Talmage told the class that “the writer’s personality shows in the piece and elevates it from an ordinary character sketch.” He finds it interesting that the Skyline staff wanted parts of his story rewritten – the very parts that his prose class liked the  best. He shrugs it off as a difference in tastes.

His mother returned to work today after her bout with the flu. Naturally, with road conditions still poor, Dart wasn’t going to let her walk, so he brought the old jalopy out of storage. When he brought her home from work tonight, he decided to take the car out of a longer spin, and he missed Dot’s presence beside him with a physical ache.

Now he turns his attention to responding to her recent letters.

March 22: He likes to read about her buying things for their home, but he also feels funny that he’s had no role in it. He thanks Mrs. Vessy for the check and tells Dot that he’ll keep his focus on trying to get their penny account to the $100 mark. He thinks those large storage bags sound like a good investment and he trusts they’ll fit in the third floor closet reserved for all their extra gear. He wonders if El and Norman will be living on the third floor of the Chamberlain house after they’re married. (Could the housing shortage have hit Greenwich, too?)

March 23:  He’s glad to hear that her monthly visitor was not as unpleasant as it has been. He tells her not to worry about what happens on June 20 in that regard. “No matter what condition you’re in, I’ll be looking forward to sleeping with you.”

He thanks her for the little love poem she wrote him when he was feeling so blue. It made him miss her even more than usual.

He drew a comical pencil sketch of himself with his recent growth of facial hair depicted  as long fly-away wings drawn in red pencil. He looked a little like a crazed lumberjack before shaving it all off.

This  8-page letter was written on cheap news print, turned golden brown with age. Not only was it difficult to read the sections he’d written in pencil, but the paper had turned so brittle that we had to place them in plastic sleeves to keep all their bits together. How grateful I am that they had the foresight to write the vast majority of their letters on decent stationery!

Because this letter covered several days, I won’t be back here until March 28.

It’s another l-o-n-g letter from Dart; 12 pages! Because it sticks to mainly one topic, and at times seems to ramble redundantly for several paragraphs, I intend to do a lot of paraphrasing.

Two more nice letters came today. You’re too nice to me, honey. The package came today, too, along with the letter you sent to Pop at Crile. The silhouette of you had your mouth, noes and eyelashes. I like it very much. As you expected, Pop appreciated the menu more than I did. The idea of stapling all the little cards around the edges is a clever one. When Mom saw it she said she didn’t believe it.

I have no idea what most of that paragraph means. I hope Mom can shed some light.

He spent the day running errands and switching motors from one model engine to another. Mostly, he’s pleased with the results. He even squeezed in a little schoolwork before going to the Skyline meeting tonight.

That meeting took place at the posh apartment of Rand Manning. Dart and two other staffers were invited for dinner before the meeting. “How I’d like to have the ability (and money) to entertain as capably as Rand does.”

Dart continues with his description of the evening. “We had 14 people at the meeting and his place didn’t seem crowded. We were well-supplied with everything we wanted to drink, plus sandwiches in the late evening. Rand did it all himself without a hint of busyness or bother. Quite a host and a remarkable character. Needless to say, we had a  good time.”

Switching topics, he tells Dot of a new boat company operating on Lake Erie this year. It has passenger boats that go out to all the islands as well as Canada. He thinks it would be nice if he and Dot took advantage of some of the day trips offered by these boats – perhaps riding bikes during a visit to Put-In-Bay.

He returns to the subject of the Skyline meeting, and this is where the rambling part of the letter begins. He tells her that often the polite conversation of these meetings seems forced or empty when the evening is over. In one way they fill a need that Dart has felt for a long time: that of social stimulation and some companionship with people who share a common interest. In this case, that interest is writing. But these same social occasions lack something he desires even more.

I want closer companionship with someone who can enjoy things along with me. …To be able to share an enjoyment of life, to merely mention something (like an exceptionally red patch on a frost-nipped elm), and to have the feeling that the other person…has the same idea about that thing.

He needs the relaxation of having a true companion with whom there is no need of careful explanation of thoughts or feelings. He has only known that a few times. Sometimes, it’s there with Homer. He certainly had it with his late friend Art Carle. Sometimes, in rare moments, it was there with Jean Kirby., But, of course, the most companionable person he’s ever known is Dot.

You and I can get along with each other, either with or without conversation and we want to be each other’s friend and confidante. … Intimacy (not necessarily the sexual kind) is only possible between true companions. He expresses his belief that true intimacy between a man and a woman cannot ever be achieved without physical intimacy. But it is that which allows a wife to be her husband’s only real friend and a husband to be his wife’s only real confidante.

Before tonight’s meeting, Rand (who has gone to bed with more people than he can count) confessed that he wishes he’d never started down that path. He is bored by physical intimacy absent real companionship. Dart seems proud that he and Dot have taken a different path. “The feeling that I might fulfill missing parts of your life makes it all the more like what I want from true companionship. I like the thought of being vital to you.”

Somehow I think that each of us should know something of what the other expects out of marriage, outside of the usual sleeping together, eating together, darning sox, and bringing home a paycheck. I hope that someday you’ll get used to all my ramblings. I hope these ramblings are harmless. I hope that our marriage will help us find the answer, if there is one, to life.

“I love you, Dot. How can we get through these last days of separation?”