What if....

God-parents.  Hmmm.  I don't know who my God-parents are.  Perhaps I never had any.  My brother's were our uncle Peter and aunt Christine in England, the father and mother of my very dear cousins Chris and Richard, whom, along with their wives, Maureen and Gillian, I regard as my closest family.  Peter and Christine gave David a beautiful red leather bound gilt-edged Bible and Anglican Book of Common Prayer when he was probably about 12 or 13.  David probably still has them.  The bibles I have, and certainly for an atheist (well, really, an agnostic, but you know what I mean) I have quite a few, are all ones I bought myself.

I am not altogether certain of the traditions or etiquette of God-parenting, but my dim understanding is that they have some part in the baptismal ceremony, if there is one, that they accept responsibility for seeing that they child or children are brought up "in the faith" (if there is one), and that, most importantly, in the unlikely but not impossible event that both natural parents die while the children are still young enough to need parental care, the God-parents will step in, take the children into their home and hearts, love them, rear them, and do the best they can for those young ones whose lives will have been shattered by events.

Ugh.  What a grim thing to ponder -- as brutal as, perhaps even more brutal than, pondering what life would be like if suddenly the children were to be killed or maimed.  Yet I imagine every parent considers both these conditions from time to time.  There is nothing to do to prepare the parents for the possibility of a child dying before time, but one tries to do what one can to address the possibility of one's own premature death.  Tries to think of who, what, and how to minimise the damage to the most precious and incredible things in one's life.


What if...?  In my family there are a great many people whom one would automatically exclude as possibilities -- either because they are too old (like Chris and Maureen, Richard and Gillian) or because they wouldn't have a clue what to do (like my brother and sister-in-law, whose own childlessness has made them self-absorbed to the point of nutty).  If you tell my brother that you have a cold, he is more than likely to suggest trying some traditional remedy.  No use pointing out to him that the life expectancy of most of the people who resort to traditional remedies for things is significantly shorter than the life expectancy of most Westerners, who prefer instead to go to the local pharmacy.  At least he has not so far suggested homeopathy -- for at that point I would have to write him off as a irredeemable nutter.

Looked at from the other side, there are not a lot of family members whom I would feel all that great about including in the pool of possible God-parents, either because I don't know them that well, or because what I do know I don't much like.  So, notwithstanding the closeness of our consanguinity, I would not want my children to end up with them.  A Romanian orphanage might be better -- at least there would be an element of chance.  The same is true on Ola's side.  Much of her family is comprised of the kind of Poles who think being Polish is the best thing there is, that Pope Jan Paweł II never said anything stupid, dangerous or incorrect in his life, and who view Poland as heaven on earth.  They don't go anywhere, don't read anything, and still suffer the scars and deformations of Poland's 45 years of communist rule.  The idea of my children being raised by almost any of them is frightening and angering.

Chris and Maureen are in their 70s.  Richard and Gillian are in their 60s.  If any of them was twenty or thirty years younger, I'd ask them straight off -- and feel very secure of the love and upbringing my children would get from them.

My friend Ron Krausz is a couple of years younger than I am.  He's already a grandfather, but as energetic as all get out.  He very fortunately found and married just the right girl, almost 35 years ago, and together they have defied the statistics ever since.  However, he and his wife, Susan, have four sons of their own, only one of whom is firmly settled.  They are committed to the idea and reality of family and all it entails, and are the epitome of humanity and generosity of spirit.  Though they have had enormous success in their lives, they remain unpretentious and unsnobby.  They live in an exceptionally beautiful place that, until recently was a small agricultural community 90 minutes from San Francisco.  Unfortunately, San Francisco filled up with billionaires and people living like billionaires, and too many of them discovered the small exceptionally beautiful place where Ron and Susan live.  It rather blighted the place, to some degree.  But Ron and Susan resisted the trend (which they could have joined) to "bling out," and so they still live on the less spectacular side of town, amongst real people, many of whom have lived their for several generations.  Good for them.

Chris and Maureen have three children, two natural, one adopted.  One of them, and his wife, are as outstanding as Ron and Susan; the other two are a bit difficult, though their own kids show every sign of turning out well, which is the litmus test.  But I don't know them well enough to ask.

The son, the not-bonkers one, fell in love with and eventually married a not-bonkers girl from the local town.  Not quite knowing what else to do at the time, he opened a shop selling, as he puts it, "nothing anyone needs," which has been an incredible success over the years.  They don't let things go to their heads.  They live in a small, very quiet village in Suffolk, surrounded by trees and agricultural land, where they have converted a former flint and brick schoolhouse into a slightly quirky and very lovely (and welcoming) home.  There they have raised two wonderful, beautiful, clever but not snotty or creepy kids, one of whom has just entered university and the other of whom is at the local high school and a very gifted drummer.  All these people (parents and children both) are genuinely kind, generous, patient, thoughtful, undramatic, reasonable, and yet also fun, adventuresome, relaxed, imaginative, and full of joie de vivre (allowing for small amounts of the usual teenage angst).

They would be ideal. And so we asked, and unfortunately, while they were very thoughtful and not at all dismissive, they turned us down.  As a rational decision, it's impossible to fault.  Their daughter is just 20 and wants to be a writer -- which is possibly not the sort of aspiration every parent holds for his children, seeing how unlikely it is to bring much in the way of material comforts.  (As a struggling writer myself, I can say how frightening it is not to have a place to go each day called "work" where the expectations are clear and the work, even if dreary, is at least something certain, and how very frightening it is not have money coming in regularly.)  Their son is about 15 and still very much a wildcard.  That is, he will either zoom to the top of whatever he does or he may flameout along the way.  He has an incredibly engaging personality, and, as already mentioned, is an exceptionally talented drummer.  However, like his older sister, he too has aspirations to succeed at something that few people succeed at (being the drummer of a successful rock band).  As I said, it's not entirely unreasonable that their parents are keeping some resources (not just money, but understanding, encouragement, love, etc.) in reserve for their children, who may well need a bit extra if their dreams don't quite come true or take a few detours on the way to becoming true.

Ron and Susan.  Fingers crossed.  Of course, these sorts of tragedies happen very rarely.  But they do happen.  I had a friend at university who was such a child, and unfortunately his parents made the wrong choice -- and his life, while materially comfortable and intellectually challenging (he's a lawyer with a superb firm in New York), has been emotionally difficult as a result.  There is nothing that can make up for love, real love, for a child.  Nothing.  So, in contemplating the unbearable and unimaginable, that is what matters.  Of course, other things matter, but not nearly as much as one might think.  Money is helpful, but not necessary.  Love involves all the things that do matter.  Because of love one will work hard and keep at things until one succeeds.  Because of love, one will grow up generous and patient and caring for others.  Because of love, one will tell the truth -- because ultimately lying is hurtful.  Because of love, one will be courageous.  And on and on and on.

So we have been looking for people who can, we know, deliver that, or will do everything possible to deliver it.  We are still looking.