Story Time - Part 3 - Full Circle ⏺️

Part 3: Full Circle ⏺️

Thoughts on Birth, Death, and the Life in between.

Continuing on from Part 1 & 2 which you can find here…

www.oliverjamesjenkin.com/blog

There is a strange but rather delicious delirium that befalls the newly appointed father.

Something in the soul (now reawakened) in those initial days and weeks after birth bleeds through like a magical hue into the mundane and ordinary workings of the everyday.

At least that is my experience…

These fresh colours are speckled and highlighted, I am sure, with tiredness and the comedown of long-awaited anticipation; but nonetheless, the balance of life and death and the veils in between reveal themselves with new meaning.

I can, of course, speak firsthand only of the experience for myself, not the Mother.

For the time and portal that is post-birth and post-arrival reminds me most deeply of the mysteries that stir and inspire deeply my own heart and the subtle art of being so personally present in your own creation that through this process you recognise your creation as no longer yours because what created it is no longer you.

It, and you, become so much more.

I speak to these mysteries, dear reader, much against my own expectation and initial better judgement.

For what was to remain as 2 parts now becomes 3, and we have yet another dogfish to thank for that.

Let me take you there…

Science Club. Sidmouth Beach. 1 week post-birth.

The tide is low. The weather is warm and overcast, great for rockpooling.

Lillian is her name. I can smell her on my jacket, and I can see her eyes vividly in my mind. I exhale calmly, knowing she is safe and loved at home by the one who loves me too.

My immediate focus, though, is on our 2 bear cubs, no longer babies, their eyes no longer acclimatising to the light. Their hands, hearts, and minds are increasingly hungry for the sensory delights of our Good Green Earth, and it is my delight and honour to help satiate their appetite.

Science club, in case you were wondering, is a fortnightly meet-up for a group of homeschooling families. Each session is led by a different family, topics are agreed and organised mostly by the parents, and curiosity is shared and guided mostly by the children.

The three of us, me and our bear cubs, were operating at a slower pace that day. Almost like the incurred slowness and moderate impairment of a hangover following a deeply satisfying and jubilant night on the town, the postpartum period in the household always feels as such for me.

Just like that hangover day and the way I notice my gait and footsteps are tired but feeling refreshed and alive after a jolly good old dance session, so too were my footsteps and attention this day. Overcast it may have been, but the colours popped, and the experience of being the only one present at our daughter's birth (other than her and the bastion of bravery that is my wife) had vivified my senses to such a point that I could see the coastline pulse with life.

As I strolled the tidal zone, the precursors of a magical event and the sensations I am now used to were tingling in my body, and my conscious awareness was beginning to notice them.

However, I was also aware of a newly deepened sense, that of not rushing to seize, to catch or anticipate the miraculous and wonderful. Call this confidence, call it trust - I’m not really sure what to call it, but I can tell you what it feels like in my flesh.

It feels like an exotic charge that helps you feel aware of the connection and relationship between bone, skin, and outer world, and all the way back down again and out.

Like a heaviness and gravity, but not in a way that leaves you sullen or sunken, but rather closer to the ground and the earth beneath your feet and thus more likely to coil up through your body by pressing down and up from that solid foundation, explosively if you choose. Like you are ready but not rushed. Poised but not overly predictive. Like a tiger, for who waiting is a luxury and a grace - not a punishment or proof of inadequacy.

It felt good.

I sauntered further. At my own pace, as parent and child alike explored the rich, life-filled environments of the otherworldly depths of each rock-pooled microcosm of creation, the trail of etheric magic dust guided my gait.

But before I reveal the moment of discovery…and as I pick writing this article back up some months later from where I started…a few words on death.

As I write this now, in my garage, the faint smell of tuna circulates. This was the rescue package I catered to a very sorry-looking 3-legged black cat called Barney, whom I picked up off a wet front lawn on my soggy morning walk in the “Mizzle” this morning. Mizzle, for the uninitiated, is a Cornish word for what is a combo of Mist & Drizzle.

Strange behaviour for a cat to lie motionless on wet grass. He was not in a good way. Thankfully, he was collected by his owner, who explained that since the death of their dog a couple of months ago, Barney has been slowly going downhill. He escaped the night before, and I am glad he has returned home to enjoy what I would imagine to be his final few weeks. He has pretty much lost function of his last remaining back leg.

This, as a singular event, is not really that miraculous. Not even that unusual in the many varied adventures of Oliver James Jenkin. But it is the day’s previous escapades which highlight my time with Barney in a more poignant and heartfelt way.

BC was his name and he truly was the king of cats. BC was short for black cat. He was 14. BC was the family cat that my ex-partner, my 2 children, and I shared.

I always considered him a guardian of the house that I left. A wisdom in his glorious green eyes greeted me and wished me farewell with a promise of care for the children I now had to collect and drop off, and in my absence it was the feeling of BC’s soul that often soothed me as I closed the door, said goodbye, and felt the heartache of not being close to my children’s heartbeats for the interim when they were there.

The night before last, a Sunday evening, I received a call (somewhere between Roast dinner and serving sticky toffee pudding) from my ex-partner to say she thought it might be BC’s time, that he was not improving. I told the children, who were with me, no school tomorrow, and that I would be there with them.

My little darlings, now 12 & 14, had known BC all their lives and I wanted to see them through what I knew would be something they would remember forever - I remembered the way my Dad’s hands handled that Dogfish, and the way he picked me up once and took me to the supermarket en route to my Grandparents house to see the resting body of my newly deceased Grandfather.

The grey, lifeless skin and estranged expression of his corpse, so obviously without soul, contrasted with the rich silence and kind, brilliant blue of my Father’s eyes, who had prepared me for the worst.

This episode from my childhood was deep in my thoughts and actions as we went into the Vet’s.

My son, my beautiful boy, the 14-year-old, held BC on his lap when the dose of finality was given. Watching tears pour forth from his eyes like drips from a reservoir of a lifetime of love, life, play, and appreciation for this king of cats, his friend, is so vivid in my mind today.

I knelt at his feet as his mother, my daughter, and we watched BC fade.

It is not like in the movies the vet said; their eyes remain open, and he was right. He didn’t explain, however, that the colour fades, and what felt like 6 souls in a room within a couple of minutes felt like 5.

That is how it goes, I guess.

I drove them all home, BC as cargo, via the bakers of course for pasties for us all.

I always find in those moments a tasty morsel is worth its weight in gold. Settling the stomach is halfway to steadying the heart in any circumstance, and as we sat around the table, the children's eyes were red and cheeks and noses puffy, my own sense of emotion could be felt, but it was held accordingly…I had a grave to dig.

It was a lot harder than I anticipated. My son, who is so handy and hardworking, this time stood by me fatigued, present but not offering any labour to the cause. However - as is so often the case - an aligned witness, a compadre of the soul, offers so much assistance. It may seem on one hand that I am the father in the situation, stoically holding my own emotions and digging and driving and orienting the scenario with paternal care.

Indeed, I think that is true, but not all the things are so obvious, and usually, under the surface, much is true in the inverse. My son’s freedom in expressing his sadness was a gift to my heart. I am sure I will only come to fully understand this through the passage of time.

It was only a couple of inches down that I began to hit layers of natural slate. Hard but not unbreakable, and hit and coerced at the right angle it came off in thin layers. I was sweating before I knew it and was glad to be. The taste of salt on my lips and a full fascial swing in my hips helped me bring down the spade onto earth with dedication and succinct precision.

Again I was reminded of my own father and how I know now it was the role that made the man in so many instances, and not the other way around. I am sure of it. By this I mean - my son, my daughter, and even my ex-partner (who lost her own Father in recent years) held the space for me as much as I did for them to experience BC’s tender return to Earth together.

BC gave us all so much space to flower into the experiences that lay pregnant in our hearts.

I hope we all did the same for him. I truly do.

I am reminded of my wife and how she and I were at Lillian's birth.

I am reminded of passing her to Bex, and watching Lillian in her Mother’s arms for the very first time.

I am reminded of the Glorious Green in BC’s eyes.

I am reminded of what it must have felt like for my own Mother to give birth to me via cesarean and to have gazed upon my eyes amongst that confusion.

I am reminded of the Dog Fish I saved.

And the balance and connection between life and death we play amongst every day.

Let us return to the beach…

Science Club and all the children are in deep explorer mode.

As I said before, my pace was slower than usual.

And if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed what I saw next.

Such is the way with most things.

Almost oddly askew, a black mass that was just about enough “non-stick like” to catch my eyes stood out at the foot of a large rock mass exposed by the tide.

The earthen coloured sand covered it mostly, but I could make out the faint blackness grinning through from underneath and the silhouette of something that registered in my scanning systems as an animal form.

I was correct.

Now held in my hands was the same gritty, coarse skin of a large, beautiful dogfish that I had once witnessed my Father so kindly handle. This Dog Fish was not spritely. He was at death's door, and I had the feeling I had come just before he was about to paddle over the threshold.

The feeling that came over me was something like feeling as if you are in your own very own film production. Main character energy. But not in a bolshy way, centered in self. But in a way that feels like you are the projection screen for the mysteries of life to briefly focus themselves on - like there is a true rapport between the inner and outer worlds. That they are wonderfully and uniquely in harmony; coloured and tinted with the rare collected colours of a single person's experiences, lessons, memories and dreams. Like all is one, and one is all.

As if Life is living you and you are living Life.

Exactly how I feel reality and life should, and can, feel for us all.

Still…in the moment, presence is demanded, and as I brought my awareness to my fingertips and noticed the dispersal of flies from my new friend, the faint but indomitable pulse of life holding on against all odds could be felt.

It is not such a big step I realise these days to go from the living flesh of exploration to the carrion of the insects and decomposers; a tidal environment is enough proof of that in which everything is continuously recycled between land and the deep but…on this day…I was the intervention.

I called out to all the children, and they soon gathered.

We popped our Dog Fish amigo in a large rectangular plastic box one of the parents had to observe our finds that day, and we filled it with water and watched as he miraculously came back to life. Slowly at first he paced the outskirts of the box and as he passed more and more water through his gills, over the next half hour or so it was becoming obvious he was fighting fit and ready for release.

All the little monkeys gathered around me as I gently plunged my hands into the water of the box and clasped the now very robust body of the dog fish. Skin still coarse but more full of feeling and the permeating warmth of living things.

I waded into the shallows barefoot, and held the dogfish in the water ready for release. At that moment, with the children jubilant and sharing the magic at my back, the initial thoughts of my father, the priest, and my love of life and the miraculous came to heart and mind.

Again, like a movie, the sky lightened to give a brief break from the unanimous grey of the morning; I relaxed my fingers and palms, and this dogfish sauntered slowly, just like the one out of my own father’s hands all those years ago, into his newfound freedom.

It was a moment I will cherish forever and one I could only fully appreciate given the string of events that have transpired since I began writing these stories and especially the magic of bearing witness to a woman giving birth so bravely - rewriting her own story with creation and giving the best possible start to a new life’s story any soul could hope for.

The question I am left with and leave with you…

Did the dogfish call to me or did I call the dogfish? Is it somewhere in between? Or does it even matter at all?

Perhaps we are all players in each other's emancipation if we so choose to be.

And to this end, dear reader, I call to you, fellow dreamer.

If you have made it this far…read what I have shared - then I thank you.

You are Legendary.

As I know I am :-)

As those who love me know me to be, and I know them to be too.

As I feel the Earth we live on is.

As I hope she feels about me too.

For us all…

I continue to dream.

And always will.

Thank you to all those who have come before, and blessings to all those who have yet to be.

I greet you all kindly.

Oliver.