June 14th
I arrived unscathed at the first destination in my journey, my daughters home. The roads were good and traffic was relatively light, the route becoming almost routine. Thankfully the weather turned into a black squall after I arrived, with high winds and a pounding rain.
We had just finished a delicious dinner of butter chicken, one of my daughters specialties, and were working on a yummy bottle of red wine. We sat on the couch to yak. It is family bondage time.
It’s not the family bondage of the past but a new, progressive variety. One with more positive and congenial tones to it.
In days of old, when the kids were young, the term “family bondage” took on a whole new meaning, one that meant someone was in trouble and now here’s Mom and Dad going to read us the riot act. It was a gathering of our family to review some issue, where the repercussions would be discussed and an outcome would be reached. It didn’t occur often, but when it did the meeting took on a very solemn, “here we go again”, atmosphere. It also took on a feeling of finality and resolve.
In some ways I’d have to say it appeared they almost liked those gatherings, but not in the way you’d like chocolate cake, more in the way of respect. Perhaps that is correct, maybe they respected the tradition, respected the manner in which they were being treated, more like adults or in a way that showed I had respect for them, and their opinions.
At any rate it was not a free for all. I would typically moderate and state the case and then each would reply in turn and claim their position. They could explain why they did what they did, or how something happened that shouldn’t, and then we (their Mother and I) would bring down the verdict. They had opportunity then to argue why that was not appropriate.
Argue is perhaps not the correct verb but certainly they had their “day in court” and could plead to some lower sentence. Occasionally that would be granted. The family bondage would then end and we could all go happily about out business, or try to anyway. Generally speaking I would have to say we all moved on and the issue was typically an issue no longer.
So sitting on the couch now with my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson is not really the family bondage of old. For one we are doing this in pleasure, we are sipping wine (all except the baby of course) and we are bonding as a family.
Where bondage by definition or implication means being held against ones will we were all here by choice. We are “bound” to each other though, and in that the description holds, it is “Family Bondage” of the finest kind.
