Cake Season

A year ago today I was running through tall summer grass after my daughter who was running away from home. She ran away every few days last summer.  She would never get further than the dollar store a block away but she and I would get blisters and ant bites from running in the grass because she usually took off barefoot and I took off after her—I would wait for hours until she would walk back home with me sometimes and once I called the police because it was 2 a.m. They wanted to know if she was armed. I said that no, she was thirteen, autistic, wearing zebra rainboots (that night she’d had the good sense to put on shoes—I hadn’t), and when the police came, she was happy to ride in the cop car. I’d hoped this wouldn’t set a precedent. It didn’t—she hasn’t been in cop car since, but that summer she was hospitalized. It was a rough summer one year ago. A year ago, my daughter was ill. Her meds were being readjusted. Just this past weekend she saw Inside Out with me at the sensory sensitive theatre and smiled at me over the part when the little girl ran away. She’s fine now, never been happier. She goes to gymnastics, bowls, doesn’t tantrum at school, will be taking swimming classes next week.

This is the Deep South and things grow and die so quickly here in the summer. The land is damp and the culture is ripe for evil or good—it all depends on how the wind blows. Changes happen so fast that it’s hard to believe sometimes that time is really passing. Hurricanes level worlds and the worlds come back. Last summer the backyard was crawling with poison oak, and this year we’ve had more time to tend to eliminating that vile plant. Last summer my daughter was ill. This year she’s well. Almost thirty years ago, I was a young bisexual bipolar girl in a romantic relationship with a woman and writing articles for the GLBT journals and the idea of marriage equality was unthinkable; this past Friday the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that marriage equality was the law of the land. I tried to explain to my son how I never thought I’d see such a day in my lifetime. I told him how eighteen years ago, his father and I had had the discussion about whether or not we should marry when our friends did not have that privilege. I argued that we would be better allies if we were armed with health insurance and all the rights afforded us under the law. A few weeks ago, because I am a legal wife I had the opportunity to access my husband in hospital when he was committed by the state; I thought about how if I had chosen to live my life with a woman for a partner and, G-d forbid, she would fall ill, I would not have the privileges of filing a joint tax return, adopting children, inheriting after death. Years ago, I told my husband that I hoped that one day our friends would be able to marry but no, I didn’t really believe they would be able to, not in our lifetime, not in Louisiana.

Louisiana is still the last hold-out in the fifty states with no same-sex marriage having taken place since last Friday’s SCOTUS ruling, but governor Bobby Jindal has said that he has no choice but to comply; clerks will probably begin issuing licenses in a matter of days.

I sometimes live life day to day on blind hope, with a burning will to just keep going. Other days I have a reason to hope. This week after seeing Inside Out, my first movie in oh I don’t know how long because we don’t get out much, stepping out into the sunny parking lot, hand in hand with my daughter who laughed at all the jokes and smiled at me because I was crying at the sad parts, I was hopeful. Friday, after browsing on social media for a few hours and seeing all the elation over the SCOTUS ruling, I was stunned, then a little more stunned, then hopeful in a way that I can’t describe. I’ve long thought of life as waves rolling back and forth, and as justice doing pretty much the same thing—sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. Hell, why wouldn’t someone who is bipolar believe this?  But legal decisions change lives---this country will be a different one for so many now.  These legal decisions will hold; they will set precedent; they have a power not even the drugs and hormones in my daughter’s body have lasting permanence. Every night, as my daughter grows up with her illness, I find myself praying that whatever is working—whatever medicines or alignment of good fortunes in her neurological chemistry—will keep on making her grow strong.  Sometimes, when I think about the fate of the United States, as I have been less likely to do the more intimately I’ve become wrapped up with the day-to-day problems of family life (yes, I was way more political in my whippersnapper days—moms at the helm of special needs families don’t have much time—and bless those who DO advocate), I’ve been way too cynical. This week, let’s just say that I am someone who can’t bake unless I’m using a box mix and blaming the humidity for how terribly my cakes come out, but I baked a cake—and I covered it with rainbow sprinkles, and lo, it was called the RAINBOW SPRINKLE CAKE. And the family ate of it, and we celebrated, because how many times in a lifetime can one celebrate something like this recent SCOTUS ruling?

It was as weird to me as the moon landing which happened in my lifetime also.  “The things you’ll see if you live long enough,” I pronounced to my kids who didn’t seem to understand the big deal. They’d never seen their mother so full of sugar and processed food. I think they didn’t recognize it’s hope I’m full of right now.  Like cake, it’s a fuel that gets used up fast, but for right now? Let me have my cake. Cake season is usually Mardi Gras in these parts.  I don’t think I’ve ever liked cake before. I know I’ve never felt this sort of hope before. Not sure why. But there on the kitchen table is a lop-sided cake with rainbow sprinkles.