On occasion, idle musing knocks memory's door to unleash a recall that suddenly springs to life. As when we came across several trilliums blooming in bright carmine while we were traipsing through the woods with Jackie and Jillie this lovely afternoon. A day of increasing warmth, a wide blue sky and the sun brilliant in its daily course across our firmament. Suddenly I recalled an event of a half-century earlier.

That was when we were still living in Toronto with our three children. My husband was never at a loss for destinations within a reasonable driving distance from where we lived and usually they were open, natural spaces, parklands of one kind or another for we have always been fond of natural settings. So our children were introduced at a very early age to the joys of hiking.

We would also take them fairly often to places like heritage pioneer villages, reconstructed to illustrate what life was like in Canada a century earlier. There were a number of such villages, we would visit annually, and one a little further from Toronto, near Kitchener, Ontario, that was named Doon Pioneer Village. We would often take these visits in the spring, as a release from the long winter season.

While we were at the village on the occasion in question, we were approached by an elderly woman. She was tall, thin and pretty sprightly for what we estimated was a ripe old age. She introduced herself to us as a Mrs. Steckle, and asked if we and our children were particularly interested in Canadian heritage. She offered to take us to her farm, nearby. We were intrigued at the offer, and following her directions and her vehicle, arrived soon afterward at a prosperous-looking farm.

She engaged us for hours, taking us around the farm. Into the farmhouse, where she showed us family photographs. She told us her husband was the first non-aboriginal child born in the area. That he had gone to university and was one of the first to graduate with a diploma in modern agricultural techniques. She guided us into a very large and beautiful barn.

My husband recalled the large horses housed there, but can't recall cattle. At that time barn owls were common residents in Ontario barns and I recalled one large owl in flight, leaveing the barn. The horses were show horses, very large, but neither Clydesdales nor Percherons; my husband recalls they were used to pull traditional horse carriages.

Mrs. Steckle walked us to a forested area beside the farm and told us that she and her husband had granted the forest which was a part of their inherited property, as a gift to the nearby community. As we walked through the woods that spring day, we were amazed to see trilliums in flower on the forest floor, the flowers a bright red, at a time when we had never seen, much less knew, that trilliums could be any colour but white, like the floral emblem of the province.

Not long afterward our family moved from Toronto to take up residence and employment in Ottawa. It took another few decades before we came across red trilliums blooming in a forest adjacent to the street where we lived when we moved to another address. And now we see them every spring. As we did early this afternoon when we ventured out on a perfectly lovely day beginning to warm into mid-spring, the sky wide and blue, the sun piercing through the still-bare-of-foliage forest canopy.

This must be a day for memories. It also suddenly occurred to me that at my age, my mother was living in a long-care home. She was in the later stage of frontal-lobe dementia, unable to recognize anyone. Her older sister also lived there, among elderly people unable to care for themselves any longer, with health issues of one kind or another. And while my mother's sister recognized my mother, my mother had no idea whatever that she had a sister she was able to see every day.

Now, during this wretched global pandemic that has upended our world, it is residents of old-age homes and long-care health facilities that comprise the majority of novel coronavirus cases, along with a large share of the deaths that Canada and other countries around the world are experiencing.