{"id":2363,"date":"2021-06-27T21:29:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T21:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=2363"},"modified":"2021-06-27T21:46:15","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T21:46:15","slug":"after-the-longest-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/after-the-longest-year\/","title":{"rendered":"After the Longest Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

He raised his long, gangly arms instinctively, then dropped them again, uncertain.\u00a0 The study in his light blue eyes was tentative, watchful, hopeful, but unsure.<\/p>\n

I looked right into them, longing to restore his comfort, trying to beam away the weight of so many months of uncertainty.\u00a0 Long, dry, confusing, lonely, frightening months.\u00a0 The last time we hugged, he was a year younger, inches shorter, shoe sizes smaller.\u00a0 Just a year?\u00a0 Across the gulf of this moment, it felt like a lifetime.\u00a0 It was before the emergence of that precocious intellect, with its crackling wit and love of puns, its astonishing vocabulary, before he asked things like how to use \u201cirascible\u201d in a sentence.\u00a0 And before he debated his mother issue for issue, flashing terms learned so young in the long shadows of the extraordinary era, out of the deep, omnipresent tragedies of the previous year, terms like \u201cracism\u201d and \u201csexism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaching toward him, slowly b\"\"ut comfortably, I encircled his thin shoulders with one arm, then both.\u00a0 Our Buddy is 10 now, tall, angular, thin, elbows and feet everywhere, an openly tender and vulnerable young soul.\u00a0 Inside the safety of my arms, he signed softly for a beat or two, then squeezed back in response.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s OK now, I said out loud, while wondering if those words would ever really ring completely true to any of us again.\u00a0 It\u2019s OK, I repeated, mustering more confidence this time, my arms giving the signal that mattered most to this young man, little boy, grandson, brother, son, child of the times, one of millions.\u00a0 It\u2019s fine to hug me now.\u00a0 It\u2019s safe.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had my shot.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He raised his long, gangly arms instinctively, then dropped them again, uncertain.\u00a0 The study in his light blue eyes was tentative, watchful, hopeful, but unsure. I looked right into them, longing to restore his comfort, trying to beam away the weight of so many months of uncertainty.\u00a0 Long, dry, confusing, lonely, frightening months.\u00a0 The last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[200,199,158,202,50,201],"class_list":["post-2363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grandkids","category-uncategorized","tag-children-and-covid","tag-covid-year","tag-covid-19","tag-first-hug-after-shot","tag-grandsons","tag-hugs-after-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}