When I was fifteen or sixteen, my father asked me if I was gay. As is his way, he didn’t actually ask me. He made a statement intended to elicit a response which would answer the question he really meant to ask. We have issues with communication in my family.

I was cutting the grass, as any teenager raised in the suburbs was responsible for doing and hating. Cutting the grass is stupid. My attitude and body language reflected my feelings about cutting the grass. My father noticed this and made an observation. He said, “you know, you show more enthusiasm for baking than you do cutting the grass.”

I had been baking since I was ten. It was the age my ...