Idle Time

 

It's been a month since school ended and The Coach and I walked away from the little private school in Reserve. From what we can gather, they were kind of expecting him to -- maybe even hoping he would. My departure surprised them, apparently.

Since then, I've tried to keep myself busy.

I've freed up a lot of hangers by cleaning out a lot of red and blue clothing in our closet.

I've rearranged our daughter's bedroom and turned it into a mermaid lair.

I rearranged my bedroom.

I found spaces in my home office for all my blue accessories from school.

I've worked on my tan in my finally-blue- again pool.

I've scooped out a bunch of stuff from the Chinese Tallow tree.

I rearranged the stepping stones.

I've carried my little blind and almost deaf poodle, Pepper, in and out to pee and cleaned up a lot when I didn't get to him in time.

I've given both of my dogs lots of treats.

I've watched a lot of baseball and written a couple of game recaps and feature stories for the Baton Rouge Rougarou (my summer gig).

I've binged a few shows and watched a few movies.

I've tried to finish this one damn book.

There have been a few naps.

I've continued my workout routine (go me!) and increased my plank time.

I'm doing some tutoring.

I made a little trip to Natchitoches for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction to welcome the new class of sports legends then updated the website for the Louisiana Sports Writers Association. 

And I've felt a little lost and, well, guilty.

Aren't I supposed to be doing -- something? Grading papers? Planning lessons? Working? Looking for a job? 

"Lori, you're retired," says the Coach, who also is retired but apparently has no feelings about it one way or another.

But I don't feel retired. I feel ... anxious, unsettled, strange, and yes, lazy.

It's not easy to get into your head that your days of doing the daily grind of getting up, getting dressed, putting on eyebrows and going to work are truly over. Oh, he reminds me that I do still have to do something. The plan is to return to substitute teaching in the fall, but I'll still get to choose the days and, for the most part, the places I want to go. 

We also are planning to launch a podcast in the fall. I have been working on developing that. 

And just yesterday I was approached by a sports website to do some feature writing for them. 

So I'm not completely out of the game.

I guess I'm semi-retired. But try telling that to my work ethic, my brain, my soul. Remember the post I wrote after being laid off? I don't do nothing well. I still don't.

But today I saw a simple meme that put everything into perspective for me and changed my way of thinking. 

This is so true. And I needed to read it.

After all the years and all I've been through -- the fucked up childhood, the bullying, meandering through college, being the woman in the man's world, proving myself, being criticized for it, striving to be better, deadlines, mistakes, taking care of dogs, cats and a husband, doing everything possible to become a mom, so many heartbreaks, juggling motherhood and career, hurricanes, taking care of our elderly parents, trying to be everything for everyone, losing grandparents, parents, my brother, my sister, my job and my identity, then rebuilding, scraping up and scraping by, starting a whole new career and surviving a damn pandemic, I have finally come to the realization that ...

I'm not retired. I'm just tired. 

And it's OK to take time off. 

May Days

I don't know why, but it seems there is something about May days in my life.

 "Mayday" is, of course, the widely recognized word for distress. Pilots, ship captains, and fishermen all use it to say "Help me!" or "I'm going down!" or "Oh shit!"

To my knowledge, "mayday" is not commonly used among journalists or teachers. Mostly, teachers just count down the days until the next vacation or the end of the school year.  Journalists, on the other hand, just say "oh shit" a lot. 

But as a former full-time journalist and, now, former full-time teacher, I've come to realize that there have been several May days in my life that have been "Maydays." (See what I did there?)

It was a balmy night in May of 2012 when I first learned that my employer of then-26 years, The Times-Picayune, which was owned by Advance Publications, was about to be sacrificed on the altar of digital technology and profit margins. The night Phillip Phillips was crowned the winner of that year's American Idol, I logged into what was then known as Twitter (now known as X, but I'll never call it that) to see the overall reaction. 

Some loved him, some didn't. But buried in between the comments was a blurb by the New York Times, reporting that Advance Publications was about to give up its print editions of several papers, including ours, to go all-digital. It would revolutionize the industry, they said. It would save them money -- at the cost of hundreds of hard-working newspaper people.

A few weeks later, I was one of the 200 employees who was handed a white envelope with my severance package. My services as a prep writer turned perp writer/news clerk in the River Parishes Bureau, would no longer be needed after September 30. It was a devastating blow. A punch in the gut that left me a crumpled heap in my pool with a bottle of Boone's Farm Blue Hawaiian. 

Now, every May, my Facebook memories are flooded with the hundreds of "-30-"s posted by each of us as we got our packets. 

Mayday.

Some of my colleagues recovered quickly, finding new jobs at new papers, launching their own enterprises or changing careers completely. Not all of us, though. Some of us -- I -- landed one toe at a time and had to hang on for dear life. In distress.

A few weeks after my last day, my mother-in-law, Jane, had to leave her assisted living apartment and moved into my spare bedroom. I became a full-time caretaker for the next 18 months. There are a whole bunch of blog posts in my archives about that if you care to read them. Search for "vodka."

I became a freelance writer for several publications and websites. I wrote features and covered high school games, sometimes writing four versions of one game for different outlets. 

Once Jane passed away in February of 2014, I could begin looking for a "real" job. I found one -- temporarily -- at my alma mater, Loyola University. I was hired to work in the Office of Public Affairs to fill in for a woman who was going out on maternity leave. 

I'm not going to lie. The money was fantastic but it was boring. Public relations people don't write the stories. They write the pitches to try to get other people to write the stories. My first assignment was to write a pitch about a rooftop greenhouse on campus. I was all ready to go take pictures and interview the people working on it when they stopped me. "You don't need to do all that," I was told. "Someone else will." Oh. And I had to week to not write it. Well OK then.

I did enjoy being back on campus, though, and seeing all the joggers Uptown in the springtime. And I got to earn my Master's degree in parallel parking. 

But one day in May, at a big staff meeting, I was praised for my skills and my contributions to the office but then I was told my services would no longer be needed. 

Mayday.

From there I got a nice little job at the local library, which I really enjoyed. But I was only there a few months when I got a call from the local bi-weekly paper offering me the job as the sports editor. It wasn't May, it was November of 2015. And I lasted until August of 2017 when too many promises were broken, too many hours weren't counted in my paycheck and my mama started fading. She was next to move into my spare bedroom, but only for a few months.

Unincumbered and in need of a real job, I turned to teaching. It was a Plan B, but one I had always wanted to pursue. In August of 2018 I was hired as a middle school English teacher. It was new and very different. I had a difficult time keeping up with the paperwork. I killed lots and lots of trees. I wasn't great at it but I sure tried my butt off and I got better as I went along. I loved (most of) the kids in my classes. 

But in May, when they told me they were not renewing my contract for the next year, I was punched in the gut again. I felt like a failure.

Mayday.

I went back to freelancing for food, but then circumstances sent me to a small private school that I had been covering on my beat for decades. They needed an English teacher and a multimedia teacher, a couple of things I knew a little bit about. I was learning on the fly trying to get a handle on what the students and my principal expected. Six weeks later, Covid hit and shut down everything and I was trying to reinvent the wheel I hadn't yet invented.

When that May brought the end of school, it was a relief -- but not yet the end of the journey.

Over the next few years, I figured it out. I taught creative writing to a bunch of eighth graders who would rather kill things on their computer screens than create a character. I started a school news website and found a couple of students who were proud to produce it. I taught multimedia and web design to some creative students (and a couple who should be ashamed of themselves for not getting an A in the easy A class). 

But then May came again. 

The Coach struggled with his baseball team and with a bad back but notched his 500th career win and a trip to the playoffs. Late, but better than never, they found a rhythm and made it to the third round. But the day after his team lost in the quarterfinals, he was told he was no longer to be the baseball coach. Too old. Not young enough. They wanted a "young face" on the program.

It was a sucker punch right out of left field. It hurt. Like hell. And it left both of us reeling and fretting over what our futures looked like. 

Mayday.

Ultimately, we both decided that this was no longer the place for us. I spent a few weeks packing up all my teal desk accessories and my various props that made the kids laugh and roll their eyes at me -- my skeleton hand pointer, my various stress squeezes, all of my beach-themed decor. And I tore down the paper palm tree I'd been sitting under for more than four years. Not one grown-up came to ask me why.

And on the last day of school, The Coach and I walked out together into yet another unknown future with our fingers crossed and our heads high. 

The origin of the word "mayday" is believed to have come from the French phrase "m'aidez," which means "help me." We could use a little of that right about now -- thoughts, prayers, good wishes, good mojo, a winning lottery ticket -- because I don't know exactly what comes next for either of us. We have hopes and dreams, some of which involve the beach. We have some plans. We hope to make the best of whatever time we have left, however many Mays there may be.

May days or Maydays. It seems they're all the same. 

Five Hundred

What do you think you have you done 500 times in your life?

I'm not talking about the mundane things like driving to work, brushing your teeth, or setting your alarm. Those are things you've probably done thousands of times. 

But do you think you've mowed your lawn 500 times? Gone for a run? Washed your car? Done 500 loads of laundry? I'm pretty sure I picked Barbie's shoes up off my floor 500 times. Maybe not.

It isn't easy, is it? Neither is doing something 500 times -- successfully.

Which is why what my husband, Riverside Academy baseball coach  Marty Luquet, did last week is so extraordinary.

On April 11, 2024, his young, inexperienced and injury-riddled baseball team defeated West St. John by the score of 16-0. That in and of itself would not be notable except that it was a much-needed win for this group of boys on a six-game losing streak. But it also happened to be Coach Luquet's 500th win in his long and illustrious career as a high school baseball coach.

Think about that for a second: 500 wins. That's 500 wins out of roughly 800 games in 27 seasons over 44 years at five different schools. 

Some were easy. Some were not. Some were really not. Some were thrillers. Some were somebody's first game; some were somebody's last. 

He went into this season knowing he needed only five wins to reach the milestone. He certainly didn't expect it to take until the middle of April, though. After going into the season with very high hopes and expectations, the Rebels have struggled to put it all together. The losses mounted quicker than the victories and Coach hit the 300 mark on the right a few weeks before the milestone on the left. 

His players tried. They really did. But a couple of games got away from them. A few were never meant to be. Slidell, not likely to lose on their senior day, one-hit them. But they were so ready to dunk the old man with the water cooler, they even lugged it on the road to Pointe Coupee, something they hardly ever did. 

And it's probably a good thing Newman rallied for two runs in the top of seventh inning to win that one because the cooler was filled with blue Powerade instead of water on that day. 

It would have been cool to do it in my hometown of Houma against Vandebilt Catholic. Instead, I left with a fresh dent in my car from a home run one of their players hit. 

Needless to say, it got pretty stressful in the Luquet household at times, with him tossing and turning through the night and me trying my hardest to find the bright spots in the dark. 

"This is like a bad joke," he said.

One parent suspected someone had a voodoo doll somewhere.

But thankfully, the milestone finally was reached in the second-to-last week of his 27th season.

Marty was a young, energetic, dark-haired man when he started his career at the now-defunct John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans in 1980 (ahem -- the year I graduated from high school!). The Cougars weren't so good though. The next year he moved to O. Perry Walker High School (also now defunct), where he went 118-70 over 10 seasons.

He left in 1991 to become the coach at Hammond, but never made it to the baseball season. With a divorce from his first wife looming and split time with his children, Daniel and Courtney, he opted for a job as Assistant Director of the St. Charles Parish Recreation Department. That's what he was doing when I was introduced to him through a fellow sports reporter who used to cover his games at Walker. 

He still coached a little though -- the summer recreation All-Star teams, a 30-over Men's League team, and a lot from the bleachers.

Then came an election cycle and the guy he backed didn't win. The guy who did win was unforgiving and let a lot of people go, including my husband.

But it didn't take long for him to land. My old friend Rick Gaille, the football coach and athletic director at St. James High School, just happened to be looking for a baseball coach. The Wildcats were a gritty, hard-working and hungry bunch. They went 9-17, but one of those wins was against the team that went on to win the state title that year. It was their only loss.

Then he got an opportunity to coach at Destrehan, where his son was a senior and his daughter was about to be a sophomore. Our newly adopted baby girl was in daycare and I was covering Orleans Parish sports at the time. He went 286-125 in 14 seasons at Destrehan with two trips to the state championship -- but alas, no titles. He was still coaching when his mom moved in with us.

Then he gave it all up. Retired -- or tried to. He tried to like golf. He tried to relax. Lord knows he isn't handy. He discovered internet memes and World War II documentaries. Then he became an Uber driver -- something he really enjoyed until UberEats got into the mix. 

And he coached a very successful American Legion summer team that won two state championships and earned one trip to the World Series. He coached a game on ESPN. He also has coached a few very successful collegiate league teams to national titles. But none of those wins are included in his 500.

While he was driving me crazy showing me old videos and memes while I was trying to do my freelance work, another longtime coach pal asked me what he was doing. I all but begged him to get the man off my sofa. And that's how he became the coach at Riverside Academy. That has been an adventure in and of itself, with his first year as an assistant, then the season lost to Covid. 

According to the National Federation of High Schools record book, only 45 active coaches have reached the 500 mark in their careers. Roughly 200 men have won 500 or more games all-time. I'm certain a few are missing from the list because I'm told it's pretty hard to verify.

And you have to wonder how many more there might be. There aren't that many of the old-timers, the guys who now have bad backs from hours sitting on sunflower seed buckets and worn out dugout benches. Who walk with a slight limp when they go out to the mound to pull their struggling pitcher. Who no longer even try to make a play on a foul ball near third base. And all those young guys who don't believe in wearing a full uniform on game day will probably never coach long enough to win that many games. 

I don't know how many more years my husband will keep doing what he loves to do. Until he can't do it anymore, I suspect, or until our school decides they want someone else to do it. I don't know what the final numbers will be on the left or on the right when he finally hangs it up.

But more than all the wins and losses, the big games and the small, the trophies and the accolades, he will tell you, without a doubt, the more important number to him is the number of lives he has touched in one way or another. The countless men who blew up his phone sending him messages of congratuations -- and some of their parents. 

Just last week his former team, the 2003 Destrehan Wildcats, who were the school's first team ever to go to the State Tournament, had a little reunion. They were recognized on the field and got to throw out the first pitch to this year's Wildcats. One of the old Cats, in mid hug/handshake asked him about his current team. 

Marty truthfully told him that it was a tough season, that things haven't been going their way, they haven't had much luck.

With a shine in his eye, the former player looked at his former coach and said, "I hope they know how lucky they are to have you as their coach."