My Mouth Hurts from Grinning

My condition started a week ago Tuesday about 8:15 am when redozdachs dropped me off at the celebration van my co-religionists had set up across Polk Street from San Francisco City Hall.  I looked around at the crowds of smiling, cheering people and started grinning.

As I talked with fellow Unitarian Universalists handing out wedding cupcakes to everyone on City Hall steps, I kept grinning.  When Ed came by to pick up two blue wristbands saying "To Marriage" -- our congregation's "something blue" gift to newlyweds -- I grinned ever more broadly.

Watching couples walk out of City Hall, waving their marriage licenses to shouts of delight, I grinned.

When I saw the cake a bakery from Livermore (Little Lover's Fine Cupcakes), I grinned even more.

When my friends who met in 1978 were finally legally married at 2 pm in City Hall front of the statue of Harvey Milk, I had to keep it up. The 100 members of our congregation who joined in watching our minister conduct the ceremony were smiling pretty broadly, too. 

Talking to a straight friend who'd delayed her long-planned departure to the East Coast so that she could see the celebrations first hand, got me grinning.  Hearing about the straight couple who got married on Tuesday after postponing their own ceremony for five years -- until everyone had equal rights -- expanded my grin.

Hearing and seeing reports of my church members on NPR radio, Univision Channel 14, an Associated Press dispatch, a Bay Guardian blog, and in a New York Times photo kept me grinning for days.

Over the next week, news from Ed and David, fyellin and Mark, Matt and Neil, and friends' blog notices, and the complete happy whoopla around me has fixed my grin in place.

It's still there.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I went to church to watch the wedding of a couple who had traveled with their six kids from Michigan.  They got married in the chapel with flowers I picked from the yard.  Mark Rogers Photography was snapping wedding pictures which Mark is giving to the couple. (It turns out Mark was married in the last week, too!)  I signed as the official witness -- the first time I've done that in my life.

Congratulations to Theresa and Carol and their family!

May my face muscles ache for a long time.