Every Sunday, I read The Style Section of The New York Times. I scan the front page and maybe read The Week In Review or glance at the contents of the Book Review. Often, though, I just start with Style. Unlike the rest of the paper, which is about loss and disagreement, Style points toward hope. Sure there are the frilly photos of what people in NYC are wearing this week (pencil skirts, if you must know), and advertisements for suede slingbacks and diamond studded sea urchin pendants that, when coupled with Nicolas Kristof’s latest column about Darfur, beg the world’s sanity. But–and this is where the hope lies–there is also The Vows section.

I love The Vows. These accounts of recent marriages, are miniature, unformed narratives. Just the facts, you connect the dots–they possess details worthy of an Alice Munro story. “Her mother is a painter who goes by the name Sigrid Somers. Her father was an owner of Rockbottom Stores, a chain of drugstores that had its headquarters in Lake Success, NY.”  In one blurb from this spring the bride, who was shown in a rare solo photo wearing a long veil and arched eyebrows, was identified as a “secret agent.” No laughing. Straight up. Secret agent. I cut it out.

I say it was a rare photo because almost all of the photos are of couples. If you look closely, there’s something a tad creepy about them. It’s not only that the vast majority of people in The Vows are more beautiful than a cross section of the population should suggest, there’s something else. I learned the secret from a friend who worked hard to get into The Vows (his family came over on the Mayflower, a sure Vows entree) and, hence, was told the rules for the photo: the couple’s eyes must be parallel. Knowing this makes it impossible to look at these photos the same way. He’s surely stooping, or she’s standing on a box all in the name of symmetry. I wonder if it’s some nod to political correctness, disallowing as it does any photos of men standing tall and firm, holding their women protectively.

Politics are generally frowned on in The Vows, unless it’s an unlikely pairing that’s come happily together–an Israeli and a Palestinian, a Clinton Democrat and a Bush Republican. Instead, this section of the paper stresses life’s possibilities as opposed to its limitations There are sudden endings and new beginnings, which infer that we can neatly finish one chapter of our lives and head straight into the next without trouble or headache. “The bridegroom was a manager until last week in the government affairs office of Altria, the tobacco company.” Physics is at play, too; people’s lives intersect and, ZOWIE, a new direction is taken: “The bride and bridegroom met last year as graduate students at Harvard. …They leave for Guatemala in the fall.” 

The stories are comfortingly similar: meet, love, marry. There are twists: meet, be annoyed, win over, marry. Meet while dating other people, run into each other months or  years later, marry. Or, like this week’s story about the wedding of one of the singers from the band They Might Be Giants, sometimes love is completely dashed and then, with grace and luck, rekindled. 

Most of the stories are of youth, but there are always a few oldsters in the crowd, divorcees and widowers. This week, a novelist, 54, married  a man, 57, who is the communications officer for Catholic Relief Services (a job he just started last month). I don’t know them, but I send a prayer of hope for them. “Be good to this couple. Let them be good to each other. May their days bind them and provide them with ample love.”

Be good to each other, Patty and Michael. Be gentle.