For Most Others, The Story, Even 50 Years Ago, Would Be So... Unremarkable.

Except of course, that any story of anyone meeting one's soul-mate is never unremarkable -- when relayed in the first person. In fact, it is the immediacy of that very personal narrative -- that makes it remarkable.

So it is with just a hint of guilt that I tease a New York Times series of stories and essays -- of love, once again (with no link, for the package won't be run until late in the day, in the Sunday edition -- that link is just the submission form story). For truly, these stories of meetings and marriages, and trials and triumphs -- should be ordinary -- in every way.

And here, 50 years on now, they are -- increasingly so. But especially among the older, boomer- or near-boomer couples in the package, the mere fact that they survived the trials of courtship in those days makes the stories extraordinary, and newsworthy. Consider just one part -- of one of those:

. . . .[We] do feel a special responsibility to tell the "his & hers" – and the adult kids’ – story. Because ours started so long ago, in a time now mostly lost. . . in time.

We too are America. We too, as Mr. Obama so well-put it, are the hope that bends the arc of history toward. . . progress.

[We are] old enough to have struggled more than just a little, and more directly, we are resolved to out-last, and out-love, the current Administration. . . . We have always believed in America as a pluralistic society: "out of many, one."

We will, with grace, mostly meet the hate we see with compassion, or will mightily endeavor to do so. . . .

Do read The Sunday New York Times this weekend, and think hopefully of the day when those couples' stories. . . are just couples' stories -- and not symbols of a larger healing, not yet completed. G'night, one and all.

नमस्ते