A warm event on a cold night.

We run a drop-in centre on Friday nights at our church. A great variety of people come to it, people play pool, table tennis, drink coffee, watch TV or generally talk and catch up on each other. It was a cold rainy Friday night last night.

A reasonably regular guest at our drop-in is Joan. She is well known in Dunedin, often drunk, has deteriorating health, sometimes smells terribly and is often looked down upon and scoffed at by people. Joan, however, has a beautiful "spirit" and I feel sad about the distorted and deteriorating life she has. Joan's clothing was pretty wet and she was a little bit intoxicated when she came so I made her some sandwiches because by that time all the food was eaten.

I then found myself playing table tennis with a little girl who comes with her mum and grandparents. Her name is Summer. She is an attractive little girl about 7 years of age. Some times she is annoyingly noisy, at other times she is so cute. I was surprised at how well she returned the ball and we were playing quite long rallies as we hit the ball backward and forward over the net. Joan had finished her sandwiches and came along to sit watching us play, with her plastic bags full of "who knows what". At one stage Summer went over near Joan to retrieve the ball. As she straightened up she looked at Joan and said, "Hello how are you?" Then she followed that with "Have you got any of your paintings? You are good at painting aren't you?" Joan dug in her bag and said, "I don't know." As she pulled things out of her bag some wool came out with knitting on it. "Oh do you knit too?" said Summer, "You are so clever!" "Yes" Joan mumbled, "and I crochet too." With that she pulled out of her bag a crochet head band she had made. Summer and I looked at it, and Summer was so cute as she complimented Joan on her work and skill.

I could not help being moved by this little girl. She had none of the barriers that we adults often have. She looked past the drunken, mumbling exterior to the person inside and she complimented that person. My guess is that Joan gets few compliments. As I talked with her later, it seemed that she only has to walk into a shop and they threaten to call the police. But this little girl, who sometimes is so annoying, could see and appreciate the beauty in Joan. It was a lesson for me.