That was to be the last day of the usual order of things, but I didn’t know it at the time.
On November 22, 1963 I was in high school. When we heard President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, we entered a new normal. We were dismissed from school and sent home to deal with the trauma with our family. The world was out of focus that weekend, and after that weekend there seemed to be more violence and unrest in the world.
On September 11, 2001 we were once more stopped in our tracks. Terrorists flew into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. We got that same feeling in our gut, and from then on, the world was changed. We weren’t quite as free as we were before, and we were afraid terrorists would strike again.
February 20, 2020 was a lovely day in Naples, Florida where I was visiting friends. The sun was shining, the day was warm. Ten of us met at a fun restaurant for “early bird”. We were a
group of ten sixty, seventy and eighty year olds acting like teenagers as we ate our sandwiches or tacos, and drank our cocktails or wine. We rented a boat, and after motoring around the area, headed out to the Gulf of Mexico to toast the sunset with our red cups of Sauvignon Blanc.
A lovely day.
That day was the start of the stock market crash of 2020. The day that we slowed in our tracks and realized that this virus that we had been hearing about in China, Italy and Washington State was affecting our IRA, and our retirement savings. We had a queasy feeling in our gut, but it wasn’t gut wrenching like JFK’s assassination or 9/11.
It was the realization that the world was worried and the country was worried, and we should worry too, not just about a comfortable retirement, but about staying healthy.
— Caroline
View From Our Windows 
Yes, interesting how fast “priorities” change.
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