Born the older of two sisters to a cobbler in a poor, seedy district of Tanchico, Calandrin and her sister were both apprentices to the local Wise Woman, and a skilled healer, she became strident that her person and surroundings be immaculate (FASTIDIOUS). It was a rough place, and so Calandrin became quite adept at preserving her virtue with a knife, and also became quite streetwise. She was always a CLUMSY girl, and she was often stumbling over door jambs and curbs, and more often than not sported a bandage somewhere. As a child, she developed an immense terror of dark places, and to this day, will not enter a room without channeling to ensure it is fully lighted, even within her own chambers, and will not sleep in a dark room (PHOBIA).
She and her sister quarreled incessantly, especially after her sister married first, had a child first, and was selected to inherit the Herb Shop from their mistress. Her sister's husband also died earlier that year, leaving her child fatherless. One day while they had a physical dispute on the stair, and there was some shoving involved, and Calandrin's sister Nolaya fell and broke her neck, and died instantly. Calandrin was horrified at the event, and fled the shop and the city. To this day, she fears that she will be exposed as her own sister's killer (DANGEROUS SECRET). However, grief stricken as she was, she decided that she would send a portion of her income to Tanchico to help rear the her sister's son (EXPENSES).
Fleeing the city, she made her way to a small, rustic hamlet in Tarabon, where she parlayed her herb skills as well as her airs as a 'city woman' into being set up as their herb woman, as theirs had just died suddenly with no apprentice. It was in this farming village that she met Yusef, a farmer's son in need of a wife. They fell and love and married, and she set-up house on his farm, and learned to manage a household. Her husband taught her to ride, and to play at hunting with a bow. She was 17. When Yusef was killed by a wolf, poaching at the sheep, Calandrin again fled, feeling that life held nothing but grief for her. (LOST LOVE)
Despondent, she made her way east, drifting from city to city, earning her keep in brief stays as midwife and healer, always sending a portion home, but leaving before long. When she was nineteen, on the verge of twenty she arrived in Tar Valon, and VOWED that she this would be the last city she would live in, and she holds that true to her heart, and will accept no foreign assignments.
In Tar Valon, she watched the Aes Sedai make appearances, and decided that she was enroll as a Tower student, despite protestations by a few sisters that she was too old to begin her training. Throughout her unexceptional novitiate and Acceptance, Cala fixated on healing in all its forms, not just with the One Power, in addition to learning other things an Aes Sedai would know: Old Tongue, Strategy, Politics, Esoteric Lore, etc She had a Healing talent, and chose the Yellow Ajah.
Throughout her residency in Tar Valon, she has maintained small hospices in the poorer districts, and is known to travel far and wide within the city to tend to the sick, and is something of specialist in midwifery.
Calandrin has taken two protégés. A novice, Amira Cohalde, A slender Domani girl with a Healing talent, and an Accepted, Caitrie Bolton, who was borne the daughter of an Andoran magistrate, and has difficulties with authority.
