My instincts serve me well

I never thought of myself as an intuitive person, being by nature logical, but I had to develop my instincts as a mother. When you have five active children under the age of nine, it is an essential skill to develop. It is a constant listening, a reconnoitering, knowing where your children are at any given moment, at least until they are old enough to watch after themselves.

We knew of a young family where the parents were both killed. The sister and brother in law flew immediately to where the children were, put them on the plane, and took them home. It was proximity that eventually gave them legal guardianship of the children.

Early in our marriage, before they were all born, I knew that if anything happened to my husband and me, I did not want my in laws raising my children. I did not like how my youngest sister in law was treated by her father, I did not like the stories I heard about how he beat his children with whatever was at hand, and how he said things to them like, "Your best isn't good enough." I didn't want my children to ever be devastated by hateful things coming out of a parent's mouth, although they heard such things from their grandfather. We were able to mitigate and turn these into life lessons.

I did not want my children to have the same experiences I heard about. I wrote a holistic (handwritten) will giving the guardianship of our children to one of my sister's families or one of my husband's sisters. I hid it in my desk drawer for many years.

Fortunately it was not used, and I finally told my husband about it. He nodded his head and said it was a good idea.