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 in northern California, printed for the monied and the manicured. I stumbled upon a cache in the Berkeley archive, and the stories of divorces and divorcées captivated 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 departure from his first child. His explanation was that his wife had been a free spirit when they had met and that qualify had simply… stopped. 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 because we have never had a true anchor worth trusting. We learn to survive. We become fluent in joy as a second language and that has been what keeps us attractive and safe, for the most part.

When he chose her, when a child made them a family, she believed she had finally found solid ground. He, it turns out, did not want (did not know?) how to provide safety for anyone. He wanted lightness and presentation, without the weight of it. When his lover asked him to literally move forward with her, he reframed his staying as nobility. I cannot do this to my ex-wife and young child, he said.

Men must learn to hold what they have chosen. Or, grow-up before they make a choice. Stop hurting.

These thoughts come to me when I walk, some days for hours like Zelda, wondering about anchors, and human connections, and limited permission for many to believe in their able to move forward.