When hanging out with friends, I’ve started to wonder (surreptitiously)  if they’d be good part-time surrogate parents.  You start thinking these things as you project into the future, imagining your child as a future teenager who may not want to confide in you.  You hope that, at that time, you’ll be able to encourage her to go talk to so-and-so (whom you trust and who will give good, sound advice).  In fact, he or she would probably give the same advice you’d give, but because he or she is saying it and not you, your child might listen.

Strange, but true.  Then I saw Nancy Gibbs’ piece in Time Magazine, “How a Cancer-Stricken Dad Chose a Council of Successors.”

So, I read Bruce Feiler’s book Council of Dads with great interest and curiosity.  Feiler, as you may or may not know, has written nine other books, one of which was the bestseller Walking the Bible, which became a PBS series.  I heard him speak once, in Minneapolis, and he was mesmerizing.

Turns out, a couple of years ago, Feiler was diagnosed with a rare cancer–a 7-inch tumor in his femur–and as he imagined his own disappearance from this world, he crumbled even more when he knew he wouldn’t be present for his 3-year-old twin daughters.

“But I kept coming back to Eden and Tybeen and how difficult life might be for them.  Would they wonder who I was?  Would they wonder what I thought?  Would they yearn for my approval, my discipline, my love?

“My voice.

“A few days later, I woke up suddenly before dawn and thought of a way I might help re-create my voice for them.  I started making a list of six men–from all parts of my life, beginning with when I was a child and stretching through today.  These are the men who know me best.  The men who share my values.  The men who helped shape and guide me.  The men who traveled with me, studied with me, have been through pain and happiness with me.

“Men who know my voice.”

The Council of Dads was born–each of the men embodying an aspect of Feiler that he wanted to impart to his girls.  [You can see the Council of Dad’s group here.]

Here’s a section of the letter Feiler wrote to each of the men:

“Will you listen in on them?  Will you answer their questions?  Will you take them out to lunch every now and then?  Will you go to a soccer game if you’re in town?  Will you watch their ballet moves for the umpteenth time?  When they get older, will you indulge them in a new pair of shoes?  Or buy them a new cell phone, or some other gadget I can’t even imagine right now?  Will you give them advice?  Will you be tough as I would be?  Will you help them out in a crisis?  And as time passes, will you invite them to a family gathering on occasion?  Will you introduce them to somebody who might help one of their dreams come true?  Will you tell them what I would be thinking?  Will you tell them how proud I would be?

“Will you be my voice?”

And later, after the Lost Year (of chemotherapy and surgery), after he’s been cleared of cancer, he writes these words to his girls:

“Because if the paradox of being a parent is that we must make ourselves unneeded, the paradox of being a child is that you discover how much you need your parents only after you think you don’t.  You spend your whole lives making yourself independent.  You go forth on your own.  And at exactly the moment you stop listening to us, you finally hear what we’ve been saying all along.”

For those of us craving such outside connections for our kids, Feiler has put together a list of questions to ask ourselves when forming a Council of Moms or Dads.

I, for one, would be grateful and happy to extend our little family, even though we have nothing like cancer hanging over our heads.  At least not yet.

What a wonderful idea!

[Post image: Close-up of cover of The Council of Dads by Bruce Feiler]