I just came in from the field, and it is still spring. Summer will be along soon but that special warm dampness still lingers in the air and it is really still spring. The old mountain is beginning to look more like summer. The lower snow is nearly gone and Dad has begun to talk about a fishing trip as he does at this time every year.

I’m sorry that I didn’t answer your letter sooner. I really tried but it has been a hard spring, too many birds, too many lovely days, too much music in everything. School has been nearly impossible and I am glad that it will be over soon. I am ready to see a new set of things each day for a while.

I’m going to disappoint you about the wedding bells, and I guess some others who thought so too. It seemed so inevitable. Well, I hope that you of all people will understand.

You know how some times it is spring very early, lovely days in February. That’s how it was this year. The campus was beautiful; everything was green, and we were all young. I met Dick at one of the parties we had in the church recreation hall. I was with Ronny Stevens, remember him? He’s a lot of fun. He introduced me to Dick, in fact.

They have been friends for years. I guess Ronnie has been trying to convert him since they were in Junior High together. He’s been coming to church ever since then, but in the Willmount Ward. You might have known him when you lived here.

He’s very nice looking. He has a way of hanging his head just a little and then looking up with a bright smile and saying something about the goodness and gentleness of life; something that you were just thinking of yourself. He’s a graduate student and is doing special work for the university.

The next week at Lamda Delt meeting, he was there and we talked and after, he took me home. He said so much, and I did too, where could I begin. He said he had been looking for a girl for a long time, and when he talked about her, I just knew it was me he was talking about, and so did he, or he wouldn’t have said it. He laughed and said he figured he’d have to marry a Mormon girl because he couldn’t stand smoking and drinking, and besides he was nearly a Mormon himself. He looked at me very searchingly when he said that and I knew it was a question.

I would never marry outside the church, I told him. He said he understood how it was and that he wouldn’t ever marry a Mormon girl unless it could be in the temple. He said his mother had been a Mormon girl.

We talked about other things and sometimes there wasn’t any need to talk. Sometimes we’d spend all afternoon driving to a place with a good view to watch the sun go down and we’d talk about how wonderful children were and what two people could mean together. And sometimes we’d talk about the church and what it meant, and about the Lord and I soon began to realize that he really did believe the way we do and, more important that he lived the things we teach.

Then after many days and evenings one night he told me that he had been trying awfully hard to find out what he did believe. He said he was going to start meeting with the missionaries and he bet that he could be an elder in a year and a half and by then I’d have two years of college. I said how glad I was. I told him how my Great grandparents had come from England for the church. Then he said he had always had feelings about things in his life, that he had always felt a guiding influence…

Then he said please not to laugh, but that he loved me, and I just sat there and the tears ran down my face. I couldn’t speak.

Sometimes I thought that nothing else mattered. I’d see him looking out at the open sky. His eyes and face all smiling, his hair blowing a little in the wind. He’s so good I’d think—God must have meant him for me. And sometimes when I saw him deep in thought I’d forget about other things and promise myself to be his.

Then the next Sunday, in church I couldn’t help myself as I sat there alone, I wanted him to be there so bad. I cried to myself and I prayed. I knew that I couldn’t go against myself.

He kept studying the church and meeting with the elders, but something was wrong. The two of us studied together.

We drove to the ocean one night and built a fire on the sand to cook steaks. The moon was nearly full, you know the kind of a night and we walked hand in hand along the surf line. Then we sat by our fires and watched the waves and listened to their pounding. Think what it would be like he said to be married. All our lives like this, together. Yes, I said. He said you are the only girl I’ll ever be able to love, you are so fine and have such a good dream of life. It’s more than that, I said. I know, he said. My Father doesn’t believe in God, he said. But if I joined the church it would make my mother very happy. He was standing against the sky and he turned to look at me. Something is wrong, he said. He knelt down beside me and I could see that there were tears in his eyes. I try, he said. I think that if I knew you would be mine, really knew it, I could accept it all. Oh my darling, he said. I love you. And I said that I loved him too, but that I couldn’t love him all the way. I couldn’t let myself say I’d be his unless he was part of the most important thing in my life, I know he said, how it is. My mother.

That was the same week that Ann Baker married Milty Bently, do you remember her? Well they weren’t married in the temple since he wasn’t a member and they asked me to be a bride’s maid. Dick had to work that day until noon and it was a morning wedding so I went alone. It was a beautiful ceremony in the chapel and the Bishop gave a wonderful talk on marriage. I could only think of Dick. Then at the end of the ceremony came the part about being married for the duration of your mortal lives till death…I felt shaky. I knew that all the lovely flowers in the world or the most lovely white dress could never make those words sound anything but empty to me and I cried a little but not because it was so beautiful.

After I drove around for a long time and nearly went over to see Dick, but instead I went home and wrote a note that started, I must see you. I tore it up after I finished it and waited until he called me that evening.

How was the wedding? he asked and I said lovely, but he could heart that I was crying and He said he would come over. We sat together in his car and after I stopped crying I told him all about how I had felt, and that I knew there was a better way to be married and that it was the only way for me. Then he said, I know. I know how it is and if that’s the way it is, then this is good-bye. What! I said. I can’t seem to make it, he said. Are you sure? I asked. He nodded then he looked at me and his eyes said, love me. Don’t let me go because I’ll never come back. And I looked at him for a long time. Then I said Good-bye darling. He walked me back to the door and I watched after him until he was out of sight.

I’ve never known a finer person. He knew something that I couldn’t explain. I would have been going against something that was too big a part of me and that would have destroyed the things in me that he loved most.

The air is sweeter because I knew him, and every love we feel for another person makes our lives more meaningful. I’ve spent a lot of time here at home on the old place. Remember the clump of trees by the creek and the pool. I go down there a lot and read or write. And I dream, because I have a new feeling in me now, a waiting, a being true feeling, for someone that maybe I haven’t even met yet. Someone who can share that which is essential in my life, that which reaches back long before I was born and stretches forward into eternity, My personal relationship to God.