A blog by Lori Lyons

Thursday, December 31, 2020

Goodbye, good riddance, good luck

 

Go Away 2020!


Hey, 2020! Yeah, you. Go away. Get out of here. And don't come back no more no more.

Everyone in the world is counting down the hours to the end of 2020 on this New Year's Eve. We have the champagne ready. Although, most of us will be counting those final minutes in the comfort of our own living rooms. No parties. No fancy dinners. No ball drops. Well, that's not true. The balls will drop, they're just not going to let us go downtown to watch.

Covid.

That's the word for 2020. That's what we will remember -- a virus that started somewhere in China sometime in late 2019 and quickly spread throughout the world, infecting millions, killing millions, shutting down life as we know it -- schools, businesses, sporting events. We tried to stop the spread. Scientists told us to wear masks and wash our hands and stay home as much as we could. But too many didn't listen. Now, too many are dead, dying, mourning, suffering.

We did not escape unscathed. The Coach got it just before Thanksgiving. A few days of sniffles led to a full blown "I don't feel so good." I told him he needed to get tested. He did. He was positive. A few days later he started coughing. He didn't stop for more than a week. 

I never got it.

The Coach's ex wife's husband got it too. Woke up one morning and couldn't smell the coffee. She never got it.

Our boss got it too. He had a slight cough one day in August, but it was not even noticeable when I had a brief conversation with him in the hallway. The next day he was letting us know he had tested positive. Not long after he was in the hospital. He stayed for six weeks and, to hear his story, came pretty close to checking out for good. He was in ICU for 25 days. He didn't return to school until the week before Christmas, toting an oxygen tank. 

Not everyone was so lucky. Several of our teachers lost parents. Our students lost grandparents. Our community lost many. 

We also lost our ways of life. We learned to quarantine. No birthday parties, no backyard barbecues, no Mardi Gras parades, no Christmas bonfires. Baseball was canceled. A lot of college football was canceled. Beach trips were discouraged. Toilet paper disappeared. Restaurants and bars closed. Movie theaters were shuttered. Bourbon Street emptied. Basically, we just stayed home. A lot. 

 Some got to do nothing. The Coach sat downstairs in the living room watching Netflix and TicTok while I spent the spring upstairs in my Lyons Lair trying to teach English grammar and Multimedia via email, grateful for my extra large touchscreen monitor and advanced computer savvy.   

Then there were the SIX HURRICANES .... 

So now everyone is hoping 2021 will be better. It has to be, right? Well, we are readying our black eyed peas and cabbage just to be sure.

But I have to say, 2021 wasn't all bad. We got drive-through graduations, drive-by birthday parties, Popeye's home delivery and Zoom meetings.

And I got a new job! In January, my retired husband was helping out the Riverside baseball team when he learned there was an opening for an English and Multimedia teacher. I went to talk to the principal and got the job! It was rough, coming in at mid-year, but I loved the kids and I really loved the school and the community. Then I got to check an item off my bucket list by announcing a baseball game.... then another... then another.... I was officially The Voice of the Rebels.

We got to leave the house quite a bit during the summer. The Coach's summer American Legion baseball team, Gauthier Amedee, decided to play as long as it could. They used the field at our new school and I became the Voice of the Wombats. It was a good summer, too. The Wombats won the Louisiana State championship -- the second in three years!  -- but there was no regional or World Series to go on to.

In other great news, Stepson Daniel saw a dream come true when he became the head football coach at Hahnville High School. It's really a Hollywood'ish story. Local boy goes to local high school, becomes the starting quarterback, achieves glory, returns as assistant football coach, goes off to become head football coach elsewhere, applies to be head football coach at alma mater, doesn't get the job, then a few weeks later, applies for sudden opening at alma mater's archrival school and gets the job. It would have been a perfect ending had he defeated the alma mater but .... oh well. There's always next year.

In the fall I got to sleep with the boss! When our principal went out with Covid, they asked Coach to step in for a week or so to get the ball rolling. No one dreamed it would be four months. He was the "acting principal" for the whole semester, guiding us through Covid, a wonky air conditioning system, a lightning strike that took out our bells and PA system, unhappy teachers, unhappy parents, technology issues, social distancing, skirt lengths, football and volleyball, bus routes and SIX HURRICANES. Champ that he is, he did a great job (and I'm not biased at all.)

Just last week he was officially named the HEAD baseball coach and the principal returned, so now he can focus on his first love -- baseball.

The year 2020 also brought us new love -- our little Pepper Boy! He is another rescue, about 10 years old. He is blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other and, we are fairly certain, 90 percent deaf. But he is the sweetest boy ever and I am totally in love. 

And while you may not agree with my politics, I'll just say November turned out the way I hoped and prayed it would. 

See? Every cloud has some silver in it. Sometimes you have to look for it, though. If I keep my job and successfully teach my sixth graders how to capitalize proper nouns and my high schoolers how to spellcheck their presentations I will be happy. If my husband has a winning season, I will be happy. If he manages to turn my pool blue again, I will be very happy. 

If we all stay healthy and if these Covid vaccines work, we all will be very happy. May we all get through 2021 unscathed.

Happy --- BETTER -- New Year!