{"id":79,"date":"2016-12-28T21:17:29","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T21:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/?p=79"},"modified":"2018-07-15T04:57:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T04:57:56","slug":"christmas-light-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/?p=79","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Body\"><span style=\"font-family: Courier; color: red;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/392362_10150524491189534_2005436180_n.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-76\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-76\" src=\"http:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/392362_10150524491189534_2005436180_n-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"392362_10150524491189534_2005436180_n\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/392362_10150524491189534_2005436180_n-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/392362_10150524491189534_2005436180_n.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Christmas Lights.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The tree glows with Mom and the clink-clink of her bracelets against the wheels of her legs and sometimes her mind. She loved Christmas. The lights hit the world and there is nothing the world could offer that will ever be as bright as lights on a December tree of the past: stuffing candy into stockings, gluing extra-large bows onto presents, melting gooey marshmallows in steaming liquid chocolate, and their eyes, their eyes like sparklers catching the flame until nothing else matters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">She never saw my writing: never read a word, deciphered a phrase, touched the white paper of a poem with her good hand, heard a line of the Hopkins Thesis or argument about love in my St. John&#8217;s Precept; never discussed philosophy or helped me write a paper for class; never saw my website or commented on my ideology; never confirmed the laughter or disappointment in the aspiring truth of my fiction. And yet \u2014 and <i>yet\u00a0<\/i>\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<span style=\"color: #800000;\">she is the reason for all of it. She is my Sophia, my elusive call of Wisdom, beckoning me as I write each \u2014and every \u2014 word.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The single comfort in tragic fiction is knowing the protagonist, having lost that which is most sacred and therefore everything, is more resilient and often wiser because of their loss. But there is no name to give this villain. There is no wrong to right. There is no arcing journey and no flickering revelation at the end \u2014 just those Christmas lights. The same old lights, lit just as bright, reflecting the same truth they always did, and another generation sits in silence staring into them \u2014 searching for the same thing she was looking for, the same thing I have found.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas Lights.\u00a0 The tree glows with Mom and the clink-clink of her bracelets against the wheels of her legs and sometimes her mind. She loved Christmas. The lights hit the world and there is nothing the world could offer that will ever be as bright as lights on a December tree of the past: stuffing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/?p=79\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Christmas Lights<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginabrillante.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}