Unfolding Hankies

 Unfolding my maternal grandmother Olive May Bertholini’s hankies, I also unfold her story of war and, perhaps, of love. Hidden within these squares of delicate cotton and silk, and striped gents hankies, are memories and clues to what she and others went through. Some hankies are torn and fragile, their white lacework hanging in threads. Some are curiously stained with blood, and one stain matches the shape of the bullet pulled from the leg of her sweetheart who became grandfather Alf, wounded twice during the First World War

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