As a young girl, I always looked forward to week-ends at Grandma and Grandpa Pentzer's home. We lived in Little Rock and my parents drove every week-end to Clarksville, Arkansas and my uncle came in from Oklahoma City with his family to help my grandparents build their retirement home. They began building their home when I was born and it has been a constant in my life. What sweet memories I have of Easter egg hunts, huge gardens, target shooting, go cart tracks, Christmas Eve and bedtime stories. The time in my childhood when everything was perfect. When Grandma was well, my parents were married, my cousins were close to me and I had no worries. But life has its changes and we continue to move forward.
After my parents divorced, I spent my summers with my dad visiting wherever he was stationed. After he was discharged from the United States Air Force, he and my uncle began a business in the same town my grandparents lived. Many summers were then again spent visiting my Grandparents home. How much peace and stability it brought me. It was unchanging and always beckoning.
My grandma passed away in 1988, three days shy of my eighteenth birthday. It was difficult to say the least. One part of my constant, changed. Things just weren't the same anymore.
In 1997, Brad, Jessica, Heather and I, left California and moved here to Arkansas to raise our children where we felt the Lord wanted us to be. We added Jared, Kimberlee and Dallin to the mix and I love every minute of it. We bought a wonderful piece of property, added a mobile home with an addition, beautiful deck and had plans for adding on. Then, the unexpected, happened.
Since the loss of my grandma, my grandpa moved forward with his life. He remarried twice and both he lost to illness. His latest lady friend, he lost this summer to cancer. My grandfather has a heart as big as Texas and gave all he could to these four wonderful women. He is now broken hearted. Without any special person to keep an eye on him, he took a bad fall and now we are afraid to leave him alone.
My dad and his wife, kept close watch on him while he was recovering from his fall. Brad and I along with the kids would alternate with Dad and Donna. We knew that we couldn't continue leaving him unattended. After my uncle and dad explored all options, an offer was made. They offered my grandparent's house to our family after purchasing it from the estate. We wanted grandpa to be happy by being able to continue to live where he has been for the last 38 years. I felt like I was coming home again.
So, with my children's much dismay and lots of tears, we began the transfer of his and ours and are making a go out of it. I will miss my old property, but I am very much at home in my heart here. Oh yes, there is some modernizing to do. But my memories from the time I can remember being a little girl laying on my grandparents floor, taking walks along the dirt road, throwing rocks in the creek, walking underneath the tall pines, and target shooting, are now being witnessed all over again as I relive my childhood through my children. My hope and prayer is that someday, my children will relive their childhood here....through the eyes of my grandchildren.....
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