Quote:
Originally posted by Miss Meow
John, I couldn't have said it better myself.
My grandfather on my mother's side was a prisoner of war in Changi for several years, leaving my grandmother with a child to struggle on her own and dealing with the trauma when he returned.
My Dutch grandfather was a member of the Dutch Resistance against the Germans and was captured by the enemy. Meanwhile, my grandmother was traipsing around Europe with five children, trying to keep them alive.
My generation and the ones following don't really know what hard times mean!
My mum had one of those hose-connected hair dryers mentioned in a previous thread. It scared the pants off me whenever it came out ;)
No doubt there are new stresses today, but I would have to agree a lot are not real "problems" when you put them against what our ancestors dealt with. My mother was telling me about her grandmother, and how she booked passage on a ship from somewhere in Germany to the US with 10 children. Her husband had died a year before - she did not know where she would live once she got here, only that it would be a vast improvement on the then-tyrranical rule of her country....my own paternal grandparents traveled thousands of miles by horse and buggy to settle "somewhere in the midwest"....but again had no real idea of where they were going and what it would be like once they got there.