For some families, it's only at weddings and funerals. For others, never at all.

For a lucky few, it's every night around the dinner table, a picture-perfect scene reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.

For my family, it was last weekend, thanks to the Nintendo Wii.

Regardless of how it happens or how often it actually takes place, it's a beautiful moment when a family can come together, put their differences aside, lock crazy Uncle Eddie in the hall closet for a few precious hours, and share an evening of laughter and joy together.

Some of these episodes of family togetherness are prompted by an event well worth celebrating, like little Joey's birthday or Sally's high school graduation. On other occasions, a family is brought together through a tragedy or a common loss which they must help each other to endure. But sometimes the best moments of familial love and shared experience can come from the most unexpected of sources.

When I opened my brand new Nintendo Wii gaming console, for example, a birthday gift given to me during a family gathering numbering in the dozens, I never expected that it would result in such touching portraits of family affection. Within minutes my cousins had opened the box, hooked up the proper wires, and were beating each other to a pulp in video-game boxing. Soon after, I witnessed my aunts high-fiving after miraculously beating their nephews in straight sets in tennis. Next my uncles threw curve balls, screw balls and fast balls at one another. If this wasn't a portrait of family togetherness, I thought, nothing was.

Then a hush fell over the room as my grandmother picked up her video-game bowling ball, reached back, and heaved it down the bowling alley from the comfort of her own recliner. We watched with bated breath as the ball on the screen inched its way closer to the pins, which slowly grew larger and larger one pixel at a time until the ball finally just made contact - and then we howled in surprise and amazement when all 10 pins toppled over, one knocking into the next with just enough power to make each other come crashing to the floor.

When else, I wondered, had so many of us gathered together and shared such laughter? We passed the Wii remote from hand to hand, delighting in each other's successes and chuckling good-naturedly at the inevitable mishaps.

Dinner was neglected, sitting uneaten and growing colder on the dining room table. Gone were the petty disputes, the common disagreements almost unavoidable when more than seven members of the same family gather under one roof for too long. What remained, thanks to this wonderful and magical Wii, this generator of silly and entertaining games, was a feeling of togetherness that could only be found in the "crack" of the imaginary baseball bat, the "thwock" of the video-game tennis ball, and the slow rumble of ten white pins gently knocking each other to the ground, to the delight and wonder of us all.

BILL ZUCK, a Foxboro native now living in San Diego, denies being defeated by his sister in the Wii boxing ring. You can reach him at wcz78@yahoo.com.