Kiss Me Hard Before You Go

Title: Hourglass— Time, Memory, Marriage

Author: Dani Shapiro

Publisher: Knoph

Released: April 11, 2017

August’s been exhausting.

I remember many years ago, when I was still living alone and my life had equal pockets of responsibilities and events and commitments as well as long periods of solitude and days and weeks at a time with seemingly ‘nothing’ to do, overhearing my sister say that nearly every single weekend for her entire summer was completely booked. I remember marveling at this concept- knowing in early June what one would be doing on the weekends in August.

This summer I had the same experience my sister had mentioned years ago (I think it’s her experience every summer, honestly). We were fully booked now, too. With the exception of a couple weekends over the last three months, every summertime weekend involved a dinner party, a barbecue, a concert, a vacation, a road trip, and time planned in advanced.

Usually my husband and I spend every other weekend under a separate roof— I remain in our apartment and he stays at his parents house a few miles away with his son, Ian, who has his own room there and a routine that pre-exists our marriage. While I miss Steve when he is away, missing someone can be nice. It gives me time to read, get my nails done, work my projects, see girlfriends and my nieces, remain independent, and welcome him home on Sunday nights.

But toward the end of July, this routine changed. Every weekend turned into a vacation, and I traveled to the beach in New York for a week, then up to Maine for another week, back home to Jersey, then on to the Jersey shore for another family vacation, and then back to the shore again for a concert and weekend overnight in Atlantic City. Every weekend was spent driving, packing, unpacking, settling into someplace new to stay, or, back into our house after a trip where laundry, unpacking, and rest from driving or being a cramped passenger for hours at a time was required.

Getting to be away on vacation with Ian and Steve was so much fun, we did and saw so many things. We spent so much time together bonding as a family. I spent a week with my brother and parents and sister in New York, we spent time at the beach with Steve’s entire family. We made up for every missed opportunity that Covid prevented last summer.

I make lists after holidays and vacations documenting what went well and what I’d do better next time. For the future, I won’t plan a summer like this again. Back to back plans and travel is tiring, and I am not meant for it. The heat this August has been stifling, and the rain has been perpetual, and the humidity has been suffocating. I prefer to space things out. Next summer, if Covid has finally lifted, I’ll allow for more space in between the planning. In retrospect, it was a beautiful summer and I am not complaining. I am just getting used to something that’s new. I am used to things going a certain way, and, I believe that I want to be open minded and be open to new ways of living this life. In order for me to carry out that open mindedness, I need to adapt.

Hourglass by Dani Shapiro was suggested to me by the Amazon algorithm. The cover, the title, it all spoke to me, with its classic intimacy— the cover showing a black and white candid photo of a couple young and in love. I put it on my public Amazon Wish List and a few weeks later it had been purchased for me by my husband. Sometimes he surprises me with a gift for no reason, because he is thoughtful and caring.

These are things I should remember when I get annoyed by something trivial that I think is about him when instead, it’s really about me (like if he doesn’t wash a dish in the sink fast enough for my liking— is that truly a flaw of his? I don’t think so. It’s me, thinking my way is the right way. Again.)

I picked this book up for August (I think he bought it for me last fall) because I needed an August book, and I needed something short. I didn’t start my August book until mid month and this memoir is only 145 pages. The writing is constructed in vignettes, small paragraphs throughout the book. I read it all in a few days.

I kept waiting for something to happen. It wasn’t until I got most of the way finished that I realized nothing exactly happens, but everything happens. It’s a non linear story spanning 18 years of marriage, told through the lens of Dani Shapiro’s memory. This is a beautiful memoir honoring her husband, son, and the life they have together. It’s told in fragments, much like memory itself. It’s a good book to read, it’s an excellent memoir to read for anyone looking to write their own memoir. It’s better than any how to I’ve ever read (even Mary Karr’s).

Eighteen years—I can’t relate to that much time in a marriage. Steve and I have been together a little over 3 1/2 years, we’re married nearly 2. The anniversary of of our engagement is about a month away, that will mark three years of deciding to be husband and wife.

We are still very polite with each other. We say please and thank you all the time. Would you please check if my package was delivered the next time you go downstairs? Thanks for cooking tonight. I know couples bicker and disagree and fight all the time, even bluntly call each other annoying or point out what the other one is doing all the time to piss them off, rub them the wrong way, whatever. We don’t do that. That’s not to say we don’t annoy each other. We do. I think we bite our tongue a lot and choose our words carefully, and are infrequently reactive.

That’s not to say that we won’t be less polite as the years pass, maybe we’ll be more comfortable to react strongly, and our skin will be thicker so we’ll let it roll of our backs. I don’t know. That’s not to say we’re better than couples who yell and curse at each other. We’re not. That’s not to say when we fight we handle it with grace. We don’t. Well, I’ll speak for myself— I don’t.

I don’t post on Instagram like I used to. I don’t know what happened. It got old. I used to post almost daily, sometimes multiple posts a day. I started Instagram in 2012 and for 5 years documented everything. I became more private when Steve and I got together. I don’t think it was a coincidence. I needed less validation out there with the life I was putting on social media once I found the person I wanted to share my life with and create a space for just the two of us.

Still, pictures get posted at the beach, when we’re all dressed up for a dinner date, a landscape shot of a mountain or ocean when we’re travelling. Look at how great my life is.

What doesn’t make it to Instagram: the hot dogs and tater tots we eat for dinner on nights right before our next paycheck clears because I won’t grocery shop until the next day. Our 401 K statements. The heaving sighs that are heard from another room when one of us is annoyed. A door or cabinet slamming when frustration gets pent up for too long. The two fights we had on consecutive vacations a few weeks ago.

“From Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” 

Fighting, arguing, not getting along of any kind makes me uncomfortable. I almost typed I hate fighting and I do, I don’t like it one bit, I don’t know any sane person who likes fighting. But when Steve and I fight, despite how much I dislike it, our communication generally flows toward a common goal of resolution after a period of time. I feel very proud that we don’t have the same fight over and over and over again. We don’t have ‘an issue’ we can’t work through. And my pride is probably misdirected— a few psychologists I follow on social media point out not resolving everything doesn’t have to be the end of the world— couples are allowed to disagree and not find common ground, and it’s possible to still be in a healthy relationship. In fact, my pride— Steve and I resolve alllll our issues! In a healthy way! could also be considered smug, and competitive, if I have these thoughts while also judging those around me who don’t fall into this category.

Oh, you and so-and-so are fighting about that again? Hmph (I’m better than you).

I feel called to take the unconscious that’s risen to the surface of my life and make it conscious yet again after this past month and all the fighting I have been a part of. Two fights may not be considered a lot to some people, but I’m very sensitive. As I said, fighting makes me uncomfortable. To have two fights, over the course of two weeks, on two vacations, was very confronting for me. Their hadn’t been a fight in awhile. Vacations are supposed to be fun. I, naturally, felt as though I had done nothing wrong, therefore said fight was unfair, and yet, I was confronted not so much with Steve’s irritation toward me, but, with my own defense mechanisms that were so loud and in my face during the fights.

The subject matter of the fights are so trivial, but the feelings that propelled them on both sides aren’t. What I noticed in myself not once, but twice, was that I become a martyr during an argument. Not just with him! With probably everyone. I don’t verbalize my martyrdom, I don’t start to list all of the reasons why nobody should ever be mad at me because of all the wonderful, caring, thoughtful things I do for people, but I list them internally during the fight in my mind, making myself sad.

Then I become a victim. A victim who is also very defensive. I might deny whatever is being directed at me, even if it’s just a loved ones perception of what happened, which they have a right to discuss (even more so when I encourage them to discuss their feelings with me) and then I somehow turn the conversation into how I was wronged.

No wonder fighting makes me feel so uncomfortable. I suck at it. I think I am so open, such a skilled communicator. But the last few weeks have shown me otherwise. I’m definitely skilled, but not in a way that I’m proud of.

I realized this halfway through the second fight on the second vacation and I was able to apologize with some humility. I take that back. I wasn’t humble, I actually really degraded myself in my apology through self deprecation which my husband thought was a little over the top. I still felt emotionally hungover the next day and he was like, ‘Well, I’m over it. You’re being too hard on yourself.’

An honorable human relationship in which two people have the right to use the word ‘love’ is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other— Adrienne Rich

Whose to say if that’s true, if I am being too hard on myself, or Steve just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore? I just know I have a new list of things to make conscious and do shadow work on: martyr, victim, defensive, smug, competitive. Otherwise the apology means nothing.

And I owe it to myself, to work through this rubble to strengthen my relationship with myself.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Here is my playlist, all the love songs that remind me of my marriage, the beginning, middle, and present of my life with Stephen.