I have a friend who loves everything Fitzgerald. I met her my junior year of high school when I first read The Great Gatsby, and we read it together. We were in the same English class, both on the literary criticism team, and as a friendship budded between us, a love for Fitzgerald did as well. This summer when we parted (not only were we both about to go to college, but my family was also moving hours away) the two of us seemed to share a similar thought regarding our parting gifts. It wasn’t that either of us expected one, but that we were both equally compelled to mark our friendship in a distinct way, and the only way we thought to do this was with the help of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
My gift to her was a most magnificent copy of The Beautiful and Damned, one of the only works of Fitzgerald I knew she hadn’t read. I thought nothing could beat it: a masterful story with a glamorous cover and a witty inscription written on its inside. I, however, was wrong. My friend showed up to our parting lunch with small box in hand. It was a trinket box with a necklace in it and she had painted it herself. On the inside of the box she wrote in her sprawling script a single quote:
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
To be honest, I didn’t recognize the quote at first. I had poured myself all over the The Great Gatsby, memorizing every detail I could for the Lit Crit test, yet couldn’t say where this quote was from and it was only after looking it up that I was enlightened. Nevertheless, I thought the quote to be about the most fitting thing she could have given me. The both of us were about to embark on a great adventure in the upcoming fall. It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time, and all we could really hope was that life would start all over again.
It was a hopeful quote, if nothing else, and one that guaranteed, in my interpretation at least, that the best was yet to come.
As fall approaches, now just around five days away, I find myself thinking of this quote that my friend has gifted me. As the temperature drops and the air starts to get crisp, I am reminded that life just might be starting all over again.