a broken mold

Hello, boys and girls, I’m back from part time retirement from my part time job after eating some part time food. And now, the news.

A woman named Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (I’m not joking) has decided to write a book about parenting. Or, er, anti-parenting, as it were. In her book, one that I will not deem worthy of naming, she explains how she was afraid to be a mother, never really wanting to be… and had a bunch of kids. That’s not such a bad thing when you are married. Everything is scary and new, just roll with the punches and be a responsible adult. It’s how you were born. But then she decided that she was fed up. That’s right, she walked away. She ended her 20-year long marriage and left the kids at home, ages 5 and 3. She says that her relationship with her kids has “improved,” demonstrating how divorce and living without a mother is actually good for kids. In fact, why do we have wives at all? If this is the case, let’s all just get the women to have the kids and ditch them on the side of the road to go into management or something. Ahem, sorry. Calming down. I didn’t mean that. Really, I’m getting married and I don’t want that at all.

The fact that anyone thinks this is a good thing makes me sick. Who is buying this book? I want to talk to you, because you and the author are both messed up. “Traditionalist!” you yell? Perhaps, but really? “In 2008, she chose to move 3,000 miles away from three of her four children.” I ask again, really? This is a good thing?

“When the time came to get in her packed car and drive away, she says, she felt “‪very mixed.” ‬

‪”Yes, there is a sense of relief. I would be remiss if I did not admit that,” she says candidly. But there was also pain: “‬I used to avoid Target, for instance, because it made me think of shopping for my daughter Serena. Little moments like that, and everything comes flooding in.”

Now a spiritual adviser who writes at Polaris Rising, Liera wrote about her experiences as a non-custodial parent at Literary Mama and Parenting Without a Manual. Her children are 15, 11, and 7 now and, after more than two years of long-distance parenting, Liera says she misses them but feels very connected to them. “‪Now we stay in touch by phone, IM, Skype a few times a week,” she says. “I hear about their lives and give support.‬””

Okay, now why is this a bad thing? Can anyone tell me why being mommy part time is a bad thing? She actually gives us the answer. “”This is the question people will ask me. The question that curls, now, in the dark of the night,” Rizzuto writes in “Hiroshima in the Morning.” “How do any of us decide to leave the people we love?””

What, pray tell, is Love? If we love someone, does that mean we help them out if we can spare the time? Does it mean we give them a little extra? A lot? How does God love us? What does He say love is?

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” God gave up His only Son to be crucified. Christ himself took on the sins of the world, all of them, so that we might be saved. God says Love is all encompassing, a fire. The Song of Solomon is a great story of this love, a love that devours all else. If a mother refuses to love her children, the least they can do is not pretend they still do. Oh, sure, she feels guilty, she feels some God given desire to be a mom, but she refuses in order for her to have a… um… what does she get out of this? A different job? freedom to roam? to go to bars and party? Her kids are not as important as those things?

But, who am I to talk. She doesn’t sound like a Christian, though she might be “spiritual,” so I suppose she should take all the good times she can get. Her end is not going to be very pretty.

Your ranter from Romania,

Caleb