My Grandparents 34, 35

that age, picking up dropped wool from beneath the moving looms, while small boys collected the coals dropped along the rail lines, down in the mines.

It seems important to extend understanding – which I believe promotes compassion - to my grandmother. During the Depression my grandfather couldn’t find work in their small northern town. The family was forced to move south to Birmingham, a tough, industrial, unknown. Granny left behind her own extended family and friends and, no longer young, had to learn new skills, lacking their support. It marked her.