{"id":1432,"date":"2025-08-11T01:31:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T01:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/?p=1432"},"modified":"2025-09-08T22:52:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T22:52:36","slug":"meet-maria-her-life-was-filled-with-hope-until-it-wasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/meet-maria-her-life-was-filled-with-hope-until-it-wasnt\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Maria. Her life was filled with hope, until it wasn\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cBeloved,\u201d the opening story in<span>\u00a0<\/span><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.maryannmcguigan.com\/books\/that-very-place\/\">That Very Place,<\/a><\/em><span>\u00a0<\/span>a woman is waiting for her pants to dry in a Laundromat in Queens. Everyone else is waiting for the arrival of the bride, who\u2019s about to be married in this unlikely place. For Maria, the ceremony here isn\u2019t just odd; it\u2019s agonizing. Because she\u2019s about to shut down the foolish idea of domestic bliss. She\u2019s made up her mind to give up her child.<\/p>\n<p>This story, which features a cameo appearance from my former (and favorite) boss<span>\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mikebloomberg.com\/\">Michael Bloomberg<\/a>, first appeared in<span>\u00a0<\/span><em>Prime Number Magazine<\/em><span>\u00a0<\/span>and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Hope you enjoy this sneak peek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cBeloved,\u201d the opening story in\u00a0That Very Place,\u00a0a woman is waiting for her pants to dry in a Laundromat in Queens. Everyone else is waiting for the arrival of the bride, who\u2019s about to be married in this unlikely place. For Maria, the ceremony here isn\u2019t just odd; it\u2019s agonizing. Because she\u2019s about to shut&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1433,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions\/1433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}