Now it was again a green light on a dock

I recently reread what I usually think of as my favorite novel of all time: The Great Gatsby. I hadn't had a chance to reread it since before college. I really wanted to pick it up and see what my education had done...see if a degree in books actually made this one different. It didn't. This book transcends educated reading. Everything in it is right on the page. The writing is so strong and pure. I didn't need 5 years of school to tell me this.

I'm getting sentimental. As I should, though. I have a really sappy story about Gatsby. So if you're not in the mood for shameless cheese, look away. It's a story of Amber and Aaron, the Middle Years.

The summer before I went to college, Aaron moved to Somerville. For various reasons, this was slightly alarming. Mainly because I was in love with him and I wasn't ready to cope with that. But lets not get into that. Anyway, Aaron lived in Somerville, and I in Medford. Then he inched his way closer still, moving to Arlington, one mile away from me and about 1/3 of a mile from where I worked. For a while this didn't have much consequence, but it was just the idea of his being there. I thought about it all the time. I had fantasies of bumping into each other at the coffee shop. At the grocery store. Waiting for the bus became an examination of every car and bike on the street to see if it was his.

Finally, I called and asked him why he moved to my side of the river. All he said was, "West Egg. I can see a green light." I basically died. How could I not? At that point in my life, I'd never heard anything more romantic, really. I don't know if he knew it was one of my favorite books. he probably did. We started scheduling meetings, every Friday at 7am, the local coffee shop. We listened to Nashville Skyline and he'd drive me the rest of the way to work. We watched it become winter.

That was more than five years ago. Sometimes I'll ask him if I really did have an influence in his move, if he really moved to West Egg. We smile about it. It's become part of us. But I do think of this:

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.

I am sure that I tumbled short. But we're here, we're still here. We're buying a house. We're getting married. We're still us. We didn't self combust like Gastby and Daisy. That's pretty big. Rereading it made me remember a lot about that time. We're so different now. We aren't them any more. We're Amber and Aaron, the Later Middle Years.