A History of Marriage Equality in Cake (with a tangent about tax returns)

On June 1, Marilyn and I went to our County Clerk’s office, which was open that Sunday to allow same-sex couples in civil unions to apply for marriage licenses on the first day that became possible in Illinois. By signing a piece of paper, we converted our civil union to a marriage.   Our marriage became effective as of three years earlier, the original date of the civil union. So, one minute we were not married, and another we had been married nearly three years. It felt like science-fiction, very joyful science fiction.  Now, our relationship is recognized both by our state and by the federal government. In Illinois we are equal to every other married couple. After decades of activism, the process was simple and the mood at the County Clerk’s moving and celebratory.  
  
I joke with Marilyn that our relationship’s legal status has been inversely proportional to the size of the cakes with which we have celebrated our union.  

On the afternoon of June 1, we celebrated with a small, brown-sugar-oatmeal cake, one of our favorites from The Cake Artist’s Studio. We shared it with a couple of close friends over cups of coffee after we all went out for barbecue.  Later, the four of us watched the local news coverage of the historic day at the County Clerk’s office. 

Three years earlier, when we had our civil union on June 17, 2011, we had five small cakes because we had so much to celebrate:  the fifth anniversary of our commitment ceremony, progress towards equality, and our civil union.  The ceremony at the courthouse lasted only two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, but it was as moving as our forty-minute commitment ceremony at the Unitarian Universalist Church had been five years earlier. Our state now recognized our union (though the federal government still did not). More than fifty local friends stopped by our house in the afternoon for cake and champagne. 

Back in 2006, when we had our commitment ceremony, we had a three-tiered cake, which we designed with the Cake Artist, and we even had an extra round cake to make sure there was enough for the hundred guests at our reception.  When my father asked whether our ceremony would be recorded in a government office and my mother asked whether an announcement would appear in the paper, I was touched--I was sorry I had to tell them both no.  The ceremony and our union had no standing in the eyes of the law.
 

When the marriage equality bill was first passed in Illinois last fall, Marilyn brought us a cake from—where else?—The Cake Artist’s Studio.  Even while we celebrated, I wondered whether filing tax returns would become easier.  After our civil union, we had to file more tax returns than we did before.  The state needed us to file as a married couple, but to do that we had to create a federal tax return as a married couple—a return we could not file with the IRS.  So when we did our taxes, we had to generate four returns: two federal returns that we filed as single people, and then the “fake” married federal return to generate the married state tax return. It made us crazy. I joked that this was a conspiracy: “Sure! We’ll give those gays equal rights.  Well, almost equal rights. And then we’ll make them fill out extra tax returns.  Even better, we’ll make them fill out tax returns that they cannot use.”   

I am thrilled to tell you that from now on, we can file one federal tax return as a married couple, and our state tax return will be generated easily after that, as it should be.  Ah, equality!  I think this calls for a slice of cake. 

(The formatting on blogspot is not cooperating today; please excuse the inconsistencies).

Grounding

           The landscape changing before my eyes—that is what I had hoped to see this summer on our twelve-day road trip through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, ending at the Grand Canyon.  On the way back, we were considering stops in Colorado and Kansas.  Thirty-six hours before we were to leave, our clothes were packed—unusually early—and most of our hotel reservations were made.  Then the phone rang, and the landscape of our summer and of our lives changed.  Marilyn’s brother Mo was missing.  Twelve days later, we found out that he had died by suicide in the woods not far from his home. 

            I know I have written about this before.  Those twelve days and the news we received at the end of them were so strange, so unexpected, so devastating that I expect I will write about them again and again, if only to try to make them more real. 

            Even as we cope with Mo’s death, we are figuring out how to ground ourselves in our lives, how to go on. 

            All through June, we made hour-and-a-half-long trips back and forth across the flatland on Route 72 to meet with detectives, to search for Mo, to plan the funeral, and then to attend the funeral.  The landscape did not change, but the skies did.   

            At the end of June, we drove west on 72 one more time, this time to celebrate Marilyn’s aunt Dorothy’s 90^th birthday; the invitation had come before Mo had ever gone missing.  We weren’t sure how we would do at a birthday celebration.  But seeing cousins and siblings again sounded comforting.  On the way there, we drove through a rainstorm—and then drove out of it, as is so common here in Central Illinois.  As I looked at the sky, ominously grey in the east and showing blue in the west, I realized I was once again seeking a metaphor for our grief. 

            The flatland grounds me. 

So does our newly remodeled kitchen.  Recently, I labeled jars and organized spices on the shelves of the narrow cabinet to the left of the stove.  I was proud of myself for tossing out spices that were old, for letting go.  And I found satisfaction in organizing what was left so that it would be easy to use.  I did all this on our new, bright white countertop. 

            This week, our nephews, ten-year-old twins, are visiting us.  This visit was also planned before Mo’s disappearance.  The countertop is now a place to experiment with the slime the twins bought at the dollar store last summer, when they were also here for Aunty Camp.  Boxes of sparklers and the twins’ novels and math exercises cover the kitchen table.  Occasionally, the boys break into the theme song for Gilligan’s Island, the 1960s TV show their “Aunty Mellon” introduced them to and which they now love.  Cutting up a peach for Sanjay and combing Sameer’s hair after his shower ground me.  I hear Marilyn giggling with them and am grateful for this reminder that life goes on, that we will all go on. 

 

The twins read every night.  They sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed.

The boys each have a cow they chose at the bookstore at Cedar Crest College, where they met me when I went out east for my 25th reunion.  The cows traveled to the Midwest with them and have had many adventures.  In a rare, quiet moment, Spotty here was reading A Midsummer Night's Dream.  The children's capacity for play and delight has been a comfort to Marilyn and me.