It was a chilly morning, but the radio reminded us that this was the perfect weather for the Marathon (here in Boston, there’s only one; the rest are mere imitators). Last year we had a fabulous 80-degree day, but the Marathoners suffered terribly, with record numbers of them suffering from the heat. So I sent them good, hopeful wishes as I took my dog around the pond, my fingers freezing. We all know the Marathon—the start in Hopkinton, the cheering crowds at Heartbreak Hill. Everyone has either run it or gone to watch it at least once in their time here. My wife adores Patriots’ Day, a holiday that includes history and sports, her favorite things. Last year, as a gift, my little brother sent the three of us to the Patriots’ Day Red Sox game; as we left Fenway we all had to hold hand so we didn’t lose our eight-year-old to the wall-to-wall crowds.

It’s a strange thing, living on the cusp of social change—miraculous and dizzying. Ten years ago to the day, on March 26, 2003, I sat in the tiny hallway that functions as the Supreme Court’s press gallery, off to the justices’ right, trying to hear the oral arguments in Lawrence v. Texas, the case in which the Supreme Court—years after the rest of the developed world—knocked down the country’s 13 remaining anti-sodomy laws. Yesterday morning, I sat there again to hear the justices consider the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage, written into the state constitution by Proposition 8. I’ve spent my adult life writing about LGBT issues; back in the mid-1990s, I was the first lesbian to write broadly in favor of same-sex marriage, and in 1999 I published a book explaining how same-sex couples fit into marriage’s shifting historical definition.