While attending University, way back when, I used to board with a great big Irish Catholic family. Actually, there were once seven children at home but when I arrived on the scene to rent a room, only the mother and one daughter were left at home. The young woman and I both attended the University of Toronto at the same College.

When I came downstairs one day the mother, H. (I'll call her), wearing a surgeon's mask, was stripping the paint from around the oak window casings with a small blow torch and a paint scraper. She was singing softly to herself. I tried to creep by without disturbing her as she seemed so intent on her task. She called out, "Is that you Allyson?" I replied, "Yes, I've come down to make some breakfast."

I recall commenting on the incredible amount of work she was doing and that it might take a year, or more, for her to strip all the windows in the house, including the stained glass ones, and wasn't she afraid of burning the wood or torching the glass? She responded that it was therapy for her after the decades of work at Queen's Park as an assistant to a prominent political member. She was now retired and it seemed stripping windows of their white paint was how she'd decided to best fill her days. At the time, I didn't understand why a retired person wasn't out scuba diving or lunching with a whole gaggle of friends.

She continued, saying that she wove her prayers into the vapour from the torch, that they would be carried heavenward with each bubble of paint that she scraped from the sill. During the hotter summer months, she'd often strip the paint for 8-9 hour stretches in her panties and a loose t-shirt. 

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