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.