by David Neil Bain

Created on: June 07, 2008

"My mother is your grandmother," my mother said.

"What a coincidence," I thought.

Now I am a grandfather. My daughter is a grandmother. Grandparenthood, like parenthood, is a template that is passed down from generation to generation along with the expectations that go with it.

Today I am Grandpa Dave. Grandparents, like aunts and uncles, are known by their first names. I knew my grandparents by their last names: Granddaddy and Grandmother Bain and Grandpa and Grandma Blackburn. The Bains lived on a hilly farm in Tennessee. The Blackburns lived on a flat sandy farm on the Alabama Gulf Coast. His grandfather came from Ireland and fought in the war of 1812. Her grandfather, fifty years later, fought in the Confederate Army. (The generations were shorter on her side.) The confederate soldier was, in turn, the grandson of a revolutionary war soldier.

In 1986 my family went to Gary Indiana to visit my wife's grandmother. I snapped a five-generation picture ranging from my wife's grandmother to our granddaughter Vanessa. Vanessa reached a milestone I could barely imagine, much less achieve. I could never have appeared in the same photo as any of my great great grandparents.

When Vanessa's daughter Amalie was born, we took another five generation picture, the beginning, perhaps, of a new family tradition.

Granddaddy Bain was the undisputed boss of his family, though Grandmother was four years older. He was a retired preacher turned farmer. He had had a congregation in a Nazarene church in Nashville before moving to Houston County. I remember Granddaddy performing the marriage of his daughter, my aunt Isabelle, in front of the fireplace.

Granddad, with the help of Dad and Uncle Roy, had built his house out of stones gathered from the property. The fireplace provided the only heat. The bedrooms were cold and the bathroom was an outhouse.

The Bains home schooled their oldest son, my father, until he entered Trevecca Nazarene college in Nashville at the age of 16. There he met my mother, who was almost two years older, having gone through the regular white schools of Robertsdale Alabama. They cultivated a citified Southern accent. My mother taught us "proper" English. She told us that her parents were not highly educated, although they sent all nine of their children to at least two years of college. She said the Bains spoke their country twang out of "laziness." They were educated people who had met in college.

Grandma Blackburn was the undisputed boss of her family, though

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