Zelda & Me

My undergraduate thesis traced the women of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels alongside the gilded pages of Sunset Magazine, a periodical published during the Jazz Age for the monied and well-manicured of the West Coast. I stumbled upon a cache in the U.C. Berkeley archive — the stories of divorces and divorcées fascinated me.

In that research, I also fell into Zelda. Her life, her luminous and restless energy. Her illness.

Recently, a man told me about an affair he had that ended his first marriage and young family. His explanation was that his wife had been a free spirit when they had met and that that playful quality that first attracted him, simply had left. I told him what I know to be true, that many free spirits, myself among them, appear wild not because we are untethered by nature, but that a true anchor worth trusting had not appeared. Or, remained only for a brief spell. We learn to survive; becoming fluent in presentation styles based on audience. Adopting a second language that keeps one attractive and ideally, secure.

After this man had chosen his wife, when a child made them a family, she believed she had landed on solid ground. He, it turns out, did not want (did not know?) how to provide security for anyone, including himself. He wanted constant lightness. When the lover for whom he had left his wife asked him to fly away with her, he said ‘No.’ Framing his staying as nobility. I cannot do that to my ex-wife and young child, he said.

People need work to hold what they have chosen. Or, grow before they make a choice.
True lightness in secure relationships.

These thoughts come to me when I walk — some days for hours like Zelda did to calm her mind and body — wondering about anchors, and humans who prefer to blame others for limiting their circumstances.