May 21, 1944

Hal, dearest,

I have a very irritating ailment. I have lost my voice. I caught a cold last week and had quite a sore throat. The cold and sore throat are very much better now but I cannot talk and you can imagine how unhappy that makes me feel.

We had a nice shower this afternoon. I hope it will make the gardens grow. For some reason things don’t seem to be growing very well. Our garden is very late. We still have about half of it to plant.

I am glad to say that Daddy is feeling better today and is able to be up. He seems in better spirits too. He even went out to see his garden. He does that if he is able to walk at all.

You have written several times about the movies you have been seeing and how punk they are. I don’t see more than two or three a year and that usually when I make an effort to take Sam to see something for children. I really have no idea what kind of movies are being made. I enjoy good movies very much and that is one of the things I’m looking forward to when you come home.

Peggy has joined one of those book clubs that send you a book every month. The first one was “Hungry Hill” by Daphne du Maurier. She wrote “Rebecca”, remember? I am reading this new book but I only started it when the rain drove me indoors today. You would certainly be surprised if you could see how much time I spend outdoors. I have forgotten almost everything I ever knew about cooking, which wasn’t much. I haven’t the slightest idea how one goes about spending paints and all rationing business. I don’t know but that you will decide not to come home and trust yourself to my tender mercies. Believe me, darling, no matter what I need to learn to keep you happy, I shall make a desperate effort to accomplish. Right now I am trying very hard to get as well as I possibly can because I have found out that when a woman is not feeling up to par, it effects her disposition and makes the biggest difference in everything she does. I seem to be getting very good results from my shots. I believe however that Sam needs some more tests and I plan to take him to Richmond as soon as school is out. He has not been really sick but I hope he can get entire relief. He had taken ragweed and bluegrass serum for over a year but I suspect he needs to take dust serum as well. I believe that is the thing that does me up worse than anything else.

I must put Sam to bed now because tomorrow is a school day and it’s quite a job getting him up.

I am sending some snapshots. They are very poor ones but we didn’t get any good ones.

Hurry home, darling, we want to see you so badly.

All my love,

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