Bubble-on-Sea

There is a place, not so very far away from where I live, that has a unique and peculiar emotional pull for many members of my family. This is a place that is caught up with childhood memories of a different time; a time before uncertainty, rejection and resentment became part of our lives.
Bubble-on-Sea is precisely that - caught up in a torrent of innocent childlike feelings and sentiment that remain forever suspended in a bubble that cannot be popped! Some of us have tried, standing by the seafront and weeping away the lickable taste of salt and hops brewing. But there is a differene between saintly-preserving and sanity-perservering. I like to think that for me I have captured the coast! It is mine now, and not preserved in aspic anymore with ageing family photos and memories. I captured it first as a young adult with my boyfriend of many years from university. I recaptured it with my husband-to-be, and then subsequently with my children. I know that some of my siblings have done the same.
There is joy in the memories, but a realisation too that it could not have been as perfect then as our memories deceive us into believing. Surely the cracks that broke apart our parents' marriage apart in a catastrophic way were there all along? When we look at the deeply poignant and moving pictures of the very last family holiday we had there together, all looks normal and perfect. Mum and Dad smile at us and hold each other in that intimate, familiar way of long-term couples. We race in and out of the cycles of a repeated holiday theme - exploring with unbridled joy and enthusiasm the places we had visited many times before. We look shiny and bright and full of NORMAL expectations of life.
There was no subtle change. It was a massive wrench for all of us, and it continues to this day with the outward rippling effects of a pebble thrown into a pond. But for some, the Bubble has never really burst.

The third such visit

My home, as so often has been the case lately, became the focus for tenderising the bruised heart and soul of a younger sister caught up in the breakdown of her relationship. All this week, the kettle has boiled, the fags have been lit, and the tears have flowed from younger, more raw versions of myself as they expend their heartache at my home.
They say things happen in threes, and three times three sisters have appeared out of their upended worlds to seek comfort and solace in an older, wiser (?) me.
In the case of last night's visitor, my own response is always tempered by the fact that I feel an especial bond with her, as I was there when she was born. She was born at a time of such heartbreak for our mother, and such stoical readjusting to life on my part. I will always remember the joy of beholding her little face as she was placed in my arms first - she was just so exquisite and beautiful! All the pain and anguish that our mother has experienced in the 6 months or so since my father had left, went. At least it went in that moment. Of course, it came back many times after that and in fact it still comes back to stalk our sisterly conversations, even in the midst of supposed heartbreak. It is always there, this feeling. Just below the surface. I share it with my three bereft sisters, who have all had their romantic wobbles in this week. It is common to all my siblings (and there are many of us), and so the conversations loop back and forth between us all, exploring and exploiting the same theme: loss, adjustment, hope.