Hourglass – Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro is the latest book in my “just finished” pile.  Ms. Shapiro’s memoir is an intimate look at her eighteen-year marriage.  She writes of honeymoon memories, family struggles, financial worries.  

Basically, she writes about  her marriage.  Not the wedding; because marriage isn’t the wedding; it’s everything that comes after.

From Ms. Shapiro’s book:

“How do you suppose time works?  A slippery succession of long hours adding up to ever-shorter days and years that disappear like falling dominoes?”

“A shared vocabulary – like a soundtrack to our lives – so familiar that we hardly even notice which of us is speaking.”

“I cannot bring myself to even idly wish any of it – not even the most painful parts – away.  Eighteen years.  Change even one moment, and the whole thing unravels.  The narrative thread doesn’t stretch in a line from end to end, but rather, spools and unspools, loops around and returns again and again to the same spot.”

Eighteen years for her and her husband.

Nineteen years for me and my husband.

Forty-three years for my parents.