He not only gave the "Jazz Age" its name, he and wife Zelda Sayre symbolized it. It was a heady time to be young, talented, and in love. It was also a time of tragic artistic dissipation.
I recently came upon a quote from "Babylon Revisited" ~ "Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material..." (And if you've ever had a skin split on one of your fingertips, you know how unbearably painful it can be.)
Yet another arrow through my heart. It's been a very long time since I broke away from my natural family, for one reason or another. But time does not do a thing to heal the gaping wound of being a 'man without a country' or, in this case, a woman without a family.
The barbed arrows received from my family are still entombed in my heart. But so is the love I felt for them so very long ago. So the above quote from Mr. Fitzgerald holds true:
All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase--"I love you."
But how do you stop loving people you once adored? And how do you accept the fact that, regardless of how much you loved them, that same love was never returned in its (your own) peculiar intensity?
F. Scott Fitzgerald died at a young age...he was only 44 years old, but drinking (probably to literally drown the inner pain he must have felt) brought him an early death and, I sincerely hope, peace. I envy him that...
As for family, I will end this with another quote from the great Mr. Fitzgerald:
"It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory."
With love, in all its inequality,
Paula
