{"id":8824,"date":"2023-01-02T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-02T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8824"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:46","slug":"holding-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8824","title":{"rendered":"HOLDING HANDS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s January 1, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">23 years ago today, I woke up believing I had finally met the girl I was meant to marry.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Melissa was my blind date on the New Year&#8217;s Eve when the world waited in dreadful anticipation for the impact of Y2K.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(Do you remember the fear and hysteria? Planes were &#8211; possibly &#8211; going to drop out of the sky at midnight due to computer malfunctions! It&#8217;s a good reminder that &#8220;fake news&#8221; and media-generated anxiety are nothing new.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The event that evening was a church gathering at a local athletic club. Melissa and I sat talking for several hours on a couch in a lounge area.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We were still there when all the other church people gathered at midnight to pray. We circled up and linked hands with those standing next to us.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that prayer gave me a perfect excuse to hold this beautiful girl&#8217;s hand for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/20221022_181301_HDR-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"4640\" height=\"3480\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s January 1, 2023. 23 years ago today, I woke up believing I had finally met the girl I was meant to marry.\u00a0 Melissa was my blind date on the New Year&#8217;s Eve when the world waited in dreadful anticipation for the impact of Y2K. (Do you remember the fear and hysteria? Planes were &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8826,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8824\/revisions\/8826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}