I found myself glancing down to check whether the person standing next to me in the hardware store lineup was carrying a purse. There was a purse. This confirmed my initial vague impression that this person was female. Otherwise, I couldn't have known for sure.

You see a few around town like this: women so worn down by poverty and who-knows-what that they begin to look androgynous. This one was short and spherical. She wore a greasy sheepskin cap with the earflaps dangling, a man's worn green fabric parka over grey jogging clothes, work gloves and shitkickers--but probably not (given vaguely defined bulges slightly north of what had been her waist) a bra. Hair: short, straight, thin greasy grey-brown streaks, probably cut at the kitchen sink. Face: greyish, lined, expressionless, lifeless; eyes brown, surrounded by liverish brown circles and sunk deep. Age: somewhere between 40 and the grave.

I smiled tentatively, an unspoken apology for the sin of having noticed her at all, and got in return the merest lifting of the corners of her caved-in mouth and a slightly shy look. I don't know why, but when she smiled, something about her--the colour of her eyes, I think--reminded me of the teenaged girl in the doctor's office yesterday, as we both waited for our appointments. The girl was a nice-looking child, not a beauty, but happy and attractive, half-way between shy and friendly.

In my mind's eye, I could morph that child into this woman--they were about the same height, with similar planes to their faces. I could pad the child's graceful young waist around with the fat that comes from trying to find comfort in sweet stuff, when there's no other comfort to be had. The girl's round high breasts could fill out and sag to her waist, flattened by the weight of sheer discouragement. The shy friendliness could dim and sink under too much trouble over too long a time. After a while a person gives up; the self-care goes all to hell, because why should a person care, when there's no love or comfort? That's when you start seeing greasy lank hair and skin grey from a bad diet and not enough soap.

But this grey sister of mine--she has a soul. And I haven't the slightest idea what that soul is like. Except that there seemed a touch of sweetness about the lines of her face, a kindness in her shy eyes, patience in the weary set of her thick body as she waited. A certain restfulness? I had a sudden notion of how her her soul might be: all worn and flattened and hopeless--but softened, not embittered, by suffering.

Maybe in knowledge of God's love for her--his grey child, all exhausted by life as she was--she might take in the sweet clear water of God's grace and gentle mercy. And then, just as her once-young firm body had long since changed into this tired unsexed shapelessness, so her soul might morph back to something as fresh with health and happiness as that young girl in the doctor's office, ready to laugh and be hopeful and dream and dance--no more a sad sack, but a strong young bride.

If she can turn her face toward God, then in the Life to Come, only God knows the grace and joy and beauty she could attain, as age follows age--growing with delightful slowness until her soul was the size of an archangel and so bright with glory that suns hid their darkness before her, confused by her light. For God has that power, if we will only listen.

The line moved forward, slowly. I paid for my piece of cookware; she paid for her lug wrench. We exchanged small smiles again, and went out into the bitter weather.