[Although I’m primarily using this blog to post journal excerpts dealing with societal, political and other world-affairs-type topics, I decided the following personal entry also warrants inclusion. The entry was sparked by my father’s receipt of a “Dear John” letter from Dorothy “Dottie” Forsythe, with whom he had had an on-and-off relationship for about two years at Middlebury. After much back and forth, my father had given Dottie his fraternity pin in July 1942, and she had accepted it. Such “pinning” was essentially the equivalent of becoming engaged.
My father’s critique of “fickle” Dottie doesn’t make him sound particularly enlightened by today’s post-feminist standards. Despite his pain, however, he still acknowledges the good that came out of their relationship. He also admits to his own role in the relationship’s ultimate failure. In this sense, this entry is quite representative of many of the more-personal journal entries, in which my father never shied away from self-analysis and, sometimes brutal, self-criticism.
In the entry’s final paragraph, my father writes that he won’t be looking for a “good” girl the next time around. In large part that determination came from his frequent conflicts with Dottie on the subject of religion, with her fairly conservative and traditional faith often threatened by my father’s desire to discover and define a faith of his own.]
June 9, 1943 (North Camp Hood, Tex.)
… Yesterday was marked by the first letter from Dottie. It was to break off our engagement, such as it was. Tonight came a note saying that she was sending the pin parcel post, insured. So though I’m never a guy to call an end to something like this right off the bat, I’ll call this the end for the purposes of the story.
It’s quite a long story, too, in my young life. There’s enough of it in the pages of these journals to make this end not altogether surprising. I remember that I was fatefully predicting it as long ago as last fall. Though I’ve believed and hoped and dreamed the other way many times since then, it all looks now like a rear guard action to stave off final defeat.
The way she handled it is what really gigs me. A month ago I figured I saw my way clear to call the whole thing off. I wrote one letter and put it straight. But I’m too much of a sucker for any dame, and especially for one that I love. My cold and logical proposal to call it off, for stated reasons, brings a most unlooked for reaction. She throws herself at me, in her letters, and by the time I leave Devens, she’s saying she’ll marry me whenever I really think we’re ready.
Now I can’t figure it out. I don’t think that Dottie is an out and out liar. Perhaps the big mistake was in my coming as far away from her as Texas. But that wasn’t my fault. Anyway, within the space of a week she undergoes a complete metamorphosis. Jack, the childhood sweetheart, comes home on a five-day furlough, and she decides to marry him. Which is what I call really bouncing around.
Hell, I can’t argue. I tried to argue with Gloria once, for about half a year. It just kept me a sad boy, with no results.
Now be calm, my boy, and admit that two years ago the past May you set out deliberately to construct a romance around the innocent and unsuspecting person of Dorothy Forsythe. Innocent was the word for her, too. A sweet and pretty girl, but I can’t say that I loved her at first sight.
Listen, I can’t talk this way any more now, because I do love her, and it makes me weak through the chest and arms to talk about her this way. Whatever misery I caused her that first year, I’ve had it dished back this second year. I started out as Jonathon Swift, roping in my Stella. I end up a poor boob, cut through the heart. Dottie was a little too old to be made over into a second Stella. She did have some ideas of her own, though to me they seldom seemed the same from one day to the other.
I learned a lot with Dottie. She drilled some respect for the social graces into me. She made me reconsider my attitude towards religion, and thereby opened up a great two months for me. We learned a lot about loving, though I think that she learned more than I did, for I was a little ahead of her when we started. I think I learned a little about getting along with a fickle woman, though I suppose there’s no guarantee on that. Not that Dottie was maliciously fickle, but, at this stage of her life, inherently so.
I guess that a guy develops a habit for a girl after he’s been with her long enough. It cuts and burns a lot when that habit is exploded, especially when the girl does it. But there are other girls, and probably one, somewhere, who will love me for the simple reason of me as I am. Gloria couldn’t do that, and though Dottie came a lot closer, she couldn’t, either. Which is neither her fault, nor mine. We certainly gave it a good try.
Here’s a couple of things I know, anyway. The next girl mustn’t be a “good” girl because she was brought up that way. She ought to know something about drink, and, preferably, really enjoy her beer. I hope she doesn’t smoke, but if she does, so what. She should have once been very cynical about religion, and now have developed a real religion to meet her own needs. Some girl! But I’ll find her somewhere…
Paul Davis Journals Blog 