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It's hardly even fall, but already I'm looking for airline tickets for Thanksgiving, my jaw agape in horror at the prices.

It's never been cheap to travel during the holidays, so I can't tell if I'm just getting crotchetier about the cost or if flying is truly getting that much more expensive.

Whatever the answer, I'm committed, begrudgingly, to doing my duty.

"Duty," I mutter while signing away my firstborn to Rumpelstiltskin for the price of four round-trip tickets across the country. And all that money for the privilege of dragging two children through an airport, tired and overstimulated, their arms outstretched, begging for every piece of overpriced candy, stuffed animal and trinket they see on the way to the plane.

But duty is a powerful thing, and that is as it must be.

I know, duty isn't a fashionable word these days. It's much more en vogue to talk of "self-care" and disconnecting oneself from "toxic" family, though the definition of toxicity seems stretched to the point at which it encompasses even just mildly annoying behavior.

Recently, the New Yorker published an article explaining "Why So Many People Are Going 'No Contact' With Their Parents." The upshot: Anecdotal evidence supports the existence of a growing trend of those who are becoming estranged from their families for any number of reasons.

We're not talking here about those who have suffered abuse -- physical, sexual, emotional -- for which estrangement is a healthy, if difficult, step. In these cases, the estranged family members are just serious bummers. They're hard to get along with. They criticize your political beliefs or your parenting choices. They make comments that hurt your feelings. They are, in short, humans.

Now, perhaps my mother and father would be alarmed to learn this, but I regret to inform you that they are both imperfect. They have ideas about my parenting and my marriage and my work, and they share them. They have trouble with their electronic devices that they appear to think I can always solve. And there are more serious problems, ones caused by the times in which they were raised, by factors beyond their control, by parents who were themselves dysfunctional. But they did, in both cases, their best with the tools they had. They could have done worse.

And now that I am older and have children of my own, I feel a sense of duty toward them, toward all my family, really.

Because it's not sentimental, really, to think about the debt you owe your parents. It's realistic. Most (but not all) parents were endowed by their creator with a deep love for their children. But even deep love doesn't always bring you home at the end of a long day instead of to the bar for a happy hour drink with friends. It doesn't propel you to the stove to cook your third meal in 24 hours. It doesn't wake you up in the middle of the night to clean vomit from a child and a floor and a bed, tucking them back in only to be awoken an hour later to do it all again.

For motivation in those weak moments, my friend, sometimes we turn to duty.

In the New Yorker article, a woman who became estranged from her parents proudly talked of the finality with which she cut off her parents in the wake of a COVID wedding debacle in which they didn't attend because they refused to be vaccinated, despite the venue requiring it. An email from her mother pleaded, "I beg of you, do not respond to this imperfect email with anger," the piece said.

I understand the daughter's righteous rage but not her implacability.

We all have suffered due to the mistakes our parents made. It's one of the reasons why psychologists will never go out of style.

That's why it's so tempting to shirk duty. I, myself, have considered staying away from difficult family members. Occasionally, I don't have the energy to pursue those who are hard to reach. We drift apart. But we return. I can't break off contact forever.

Not because I'm a martyr or because I think I'm superior, but because I want the same forgiveness and grace extended to me that I extend to them. Because I know that I am, also, imperfect, and I can clearly foresee a time when my children might feel less than charitable toward my meddling or my anxious entreaties.

There will come a day that I will be on the other end of the complex dyad of parent and child.

Sometimes, the only thing keeping my children returning to me will be not perfect love or my unimpeachable parenting but duty. There will be times when it will be the glue holding us together.

Duty can pay dividends, and ones for which I will be grateful as a parent.

So, now, I pay its cost as a child.

Even if it's measured in airline tickets.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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