Category — Writing

When envelopes arrive at my door as lovely as this I am reminded that snail mail is the truly greatest form of correspondence.

Thank you, Jenn. 

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As promised, here are a few of the postcards I sent out in the last few weeks as part of the great comment challenge. I hope you enjoyed them!

by Joy Harjo

I’m not afraid of love
or its consequence of light.

It’s not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.

I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.

Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot.

The stars who were created by words
are circling over this house
formed of calcium, of blood–

this house
in danger of being torn apart
by stones of fear.

If these words can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars.

Transfix us with love.

:::

This is the first poem we read on day one of my poetry workshop. I love the lines: “I say bless this house with stars.” They inspired a poem of my own which I’ll post soon.

Truly, my world feels small. I wake and my life, from dawn until dusk, is ordered by a 19 pound toddler. We sit on the floor. We try new foods. We tear books off shelves. We sing, play the piano, take walks, swing, babble.

Then there are moments I step out. I get my act together, cross the street and meet women, mothers, new friends. One, a forensic biologist with the RCMP. Another, a casting director. Still another, the wife of an SFU professor, recently moved from San Fransisco. These are interesting, beautiful women who, along with me, have given up their ‘day jobs’ to nurse babies on hard wood chairs in the centre of Starbucks as the world speeds by.

It’s hard to give up. It’s hard to let the e-mails stack up for days, some for weeks, as I retire at 8pm, my body a sack of worn out bones. It’s hard to pass up opportunities, quit jobs. I don’t read blogs. I scan newspapers. I get by on CBC Radio newscasts as Madeleine and I spend the day. It’s enough for now. My life demands focus. 

I am surrendering. 

It’s my theme at present: Surrender. I recently read a book titled Surrendering to Motherhood, a gift from my friend Julia that spoke right to my core. “I realized I was working not for dollars but out of ego and a need to create,” author Iris Krasnow writes. It seems I had lurched back into the saddle for the same reasons and the stress of mothering a 6-month old, keeping a home, being a wife and working on a variety of projects was quickly killing any creative energy I had left.

A glimpse into my journal tells the story best:

Father, please help me unravel. I am wound so tight. Soiled laundry, dishes, clothes demanding mending. Unwritten stories, e-mails, notes to prepare. Waiting friends, family, husband, baby… clamouring at my skin.

You win.

I surrender all into your open arms. Wash, wash, wash over me like the liquid wind of ferry deck. Spill, spill like milk, the scent of honey, washing away my worry.

It is too much for me. I need to fall open, fall out of this rhythm, this frenetic pace.

I am mother, wife, daughter, friend. Then writer, teacher, blogger, business owner.

I fail Madeleine when I spill myself like an open grave. Smiling through fatigue, tears stored on shelves for moments like these.

They are a city wall. Built up, built up. Revealed first to my mother’s eyes, ears, love. 

“I am worried about you.”

(”Heed her words,” I hear you say.)

“Cut everything out. Say no. Until you have got her on a schedule and sleeping well in the night.”

At first I push back, then I breathe out. “Yes, Mom.” And the wave pulls back…

Yes. May that be my first response, Friend. Rather than no, no, no. I don’t know better. (Oh God, do I ever not.)

Candle, key and canvas feel dead to me. Oh spirit, come. Damn you assignments, damn you ego. For what is your gain?

Strip it away. Strip it away. Strip it away. 

My life leaves me little time for writing. I have an inquisitive, social child who demands all of me in her waking moments. When I have time I want to create: pen poetry, paint, write stories — the website for the Seeking Eve (inspirational Christian women) project is almost complete and I want to concentrate my energy there. I’ll also still be blogging weekly at After Hours. 

What does that mean for this little old blog? I hope to share pictures and poetry as life unfolds, sometimes writing, though I hope to spend more and more of my time on published work.

The few of you who read here: thank you! I love being able to share my life with you in this writer-ly way. I hope you keep reading and I promise to keep you up-to-date on new projects, and our ambling life.  

I’d like to leave you with another quote from Henri Nouwen, sent to me this week by my husband (he’s been doing that a lot lately!) 

“Our Unique Call

So many terrible things happen every day that we start wondering whether the few things we do ourselves make any sense. When people are starving only a few thousand miles away, when wars are raging close to our borders, when countless people in our own cities have no homes to live in, our own activities look futile. Such considerations, however, can paralyse us and depress us.

Here the word call becomes important. We are not called to save the world, solve all problems, and help all people. But we each have our own unique call, in our families, in our work, in our world. We have to keep asking God to help us see clearly what our call is and to give us the strength to live out that call with trust. Then we will discover that our faithfulness to a small task is the most healing response to the illnesses of our time.”

Here’s to seeing our call clearly and living with the trust necessary to see it through.

So, it turns out I have way more postcards than I thought. I’m not sure from where I’ve accumulated them all, but there they are:

I’ve decided to send postcards to anyone that’s commented in the last two months, because I am simply enamoured with this project. The more postcards to type, the better!

If you’d like to receive a postcard (complete with a typewritten quote of my choosing) than simply say HI! below and I’ll follow-up to get your address. Know a friend who’d like a random postcard to show up at their door? Send them over…

Tippity-tap-clackity-clack, your resident of-all-trades-jack: Christina

A very goofy angel

It took parenthood to awaken me to the fragility of life. 

These days, as I make my way through the world, fearful thoughts dart through my mind: 

“What if that car, racing the red, hit me? I’d be brain-damaged, mangled. Would my daughter recognize me? When they wheeled me out of surgery would her face still crest like the sun at the sight of me? Or would she not know me at all?” 

I imagine her life without her mother and my eyes well with a flurry of tears.

In other moments, I think:

“What if something happened to my little girl? What if she had a life-threatening disease, her body shrunken to a mere few pounds as she fought for life? How would I cope with feeding tubes being laced down her throat? Would I crumble like paper or would I rise up, warring in the fight?”

I find my lips whispering prayers of thanks for life, every day. It’s a new posture for me. For most of my life I have taken life for granted. It was given. I am living it. But now, with a small life entrusted into my faulty hands, I tread lightly. I am mindful. I want to drive slower, look both ways, meander more, notice. 

It’s the way God sees, I think. He watches this spinning globe He made and hones in on a delightful little boy kicking soccer balls in Argentina. He smiles. Delights in this young child, destined for a profession in plumbing, fatherhood, public service. He sees the fullness of a life unfolding beneath dusty feet.

God is a God of love, the Bible tells us over and over. 

Psalm 33:18 reads: “The Lord watches over those who obey him, those who trust in his constant love.” 

How would our lives look differently if we believed it?

I’d be much less fearful, I think.

Griffin and Sabine postcard by Nick Bantock

Hi friends,

I’ve been blogging on this here ‘ol site for a good six years now. I started on xanga and made the switch to wordpress a while back. In xanga-land we had an awesome community feel, with comments reaching upwards of 10-20 per post. These days this blog is silent, save for comments from blog-reader-and-now-dear-friend Julia and my stepmom. (Thanks guys!) I think part of the reason is that I am uploading the site to facebook so a lot of you are commenting there instead of here.

I guess, what I am trying to say is: “I miss you!!” I miss your comments right here on “The Poetry of Life” — christinacrook.com.

I want to know my readers, ‘talk’ with you and interact with your feedback and comments. I want to know what parts of this site you love — confessions? poetry? words for thought? pictures? recipes? snapshots of life? Please share your thoughts… 

Here’s how I hope to get you to say “Hi!” –

Comment below (here, on the blog, not on facebook) and include your mailing address (if you prefer not to write it on the site, leave your e-mail address and I will send you a message to get it.)

Within the week I will mail you a postcard with a type-written quote! I have a vast collection of postcards — Griffin and Sabine, CBC Radio 3, vintage ones collected at garage sales… Request one, or wait and be surprised! I’ll feature the cards and quotes here in the weeks to come.

Hoping to hear from you…

xo Christina

Her fingers wrap around mine like a chord. Limbs darting up to tug at my linen, cotton billows, reaching out to declare: “You are mine.” Tenacious, yet layered with a heart like cream, Madeleine steals frames from faces in an instant. Translucent glass beads scattered about the floor save her from topples as she devours them with her finger folds. Snowy flesh. She is sitting better and better every day. At dawn each morning Daddy awakes to spend sleepy hours with her while I try and catch up from night waking. Enfolding one another in the day’s first light. This is our love.

Here in the Terminal City the Olympics have arrived, the sun is making a rare February appearance, and Vancouverites are uncharacteristically Canada-clad. It’s a lovely scene.

So far, thanks to my brother in Whistler, I’ve been able to attend the final dress rehearsal of the Opening Ceremonies which at times reminded me of Cirque du Soliel and left me similarly jaw-dropped. If you watched it, I’m referring to orcas taking breaths through the floor of BC Place. From our vantage point in the nose-bleeds, it was breathtaking. Nelly Furtado and Sarah MacLachlan weren’t too shabby either. 

I’ve been donning my cherry red Olympic mittens with pride as Madeleine and I galavant through Metro Vancouver, and my red Roots hoodie has been getting its share of wear. Oh Canada. 

I’ve only watched a bit of the actual Games because we live in a cable-free home. On my mom’s t.v. I saw Canada pummel Norway in hockey (sorry Hunny,) at our neighbourhood coffee shop I witnessed the Dutch kick-ass in speed skating, and while I got my haircut at a friend’s house yesterday morning, I took in some curling. What I’d really like to see is some big air. 

Last week I spent the better part of a morning with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team, interviewing them for a piece for Decision. No, they weren’t called in in the wake of disaster (although the first few days of the Games had its share of it.) Instead they are in town to serve with the More than Gold, a Christian umbrella organization, as community chaplains and hospitality volunteers. You know, serving hot chocolate and all that. They were a great bunch, the oldest of which was a spry seventy years. I met them at the base of Canada Place (aka the International Media Centre,) steps away from the Olympic torch, which also happens to be my little sister’s place of work. So, her and I met up.   

Thursday is my big Olympic Day. I am going to bundle Madeleine up in her adorable blue and white sweater (the most Olympic-looking item in her ‘closet,’) comb through downtown and buy her a Quatchi bear. 

Vive les Jeux Olympiques!

“When a writer writes, it’s as if she holds the sides of her chest apart, exposes her beating heart. And even though everything wants to heal, to close over and protect the heart, the writer must keep it bare, exposed. And in doing this, all of life is kept back, all the petty demands of the day-to-day. The heart is a river. The act of writing is the moving water that holds the banks apart, keeps the muscle of words flexing so that the reader can be carried along by this movement. To be given space and the chance to leave one’s earthly world. Is there any greater freedom than this?”

- Helen Humphreys, Lost Garden

His name is Remi, we are having a love affair, and my spouse knows about it. 

He is a Remington Portable. A archetypal typewriter manufactured in the mid-1930s. His ruddy grey body sits squarely in the centre of my coffee table, the focal point of our living room. And rightly so. As a writer married to a bibliophile, words are central in our home.  

And now more than ever. As new mother I have never been so keenly aware of language. Word by word I am naming my daughter’s world. Raffi songs are sung by heart, daily chores are narrated, and tastes, colours, sights and sounds are animated for her sheer delight.

My daughter teaches me each day that, when it comes to words, it is all about the delivery. For instance, plainly announcing “We are going for a walk” receives no more than a glance, while sing-songing the same line results in a mess of wild baby giggles.

Typewriters have a similar effect on me.

It doesn’t matter what words fall into Remi, he makes them beautiful. It’s this beauty, and the love of sending and receiving letters, that inspired my friend Marisa and I to co-found the Vancouver Letter Writing Party last fall. Each month a growing number of us gather for no other reason than to type. Letters are written, brimming with minutiae, and they are beautiful.

These words want to be read. They are climbing up, off of the paper, begging to be stamped, sealed and sent.  

When was the last time you wrote a letter — typewritten or otherwise?

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This post originally appeared on the After Hours blog.