Ben East

This day, Leap Day, doesn’t come around much.

Why isn’t Leap Day a holiday? It comes once every four years and sometimes not even then (the year must be divisible by four and 100 but not by 400, so 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500 are not Leap Years).

You’d think that makes it more special than the Fourth of July, Christmas, and Presidents Day combined.

In its present form, Leap Day is not leaping anywhere. It is holding us back, keeping us in February, a resoundingly wintry month. It is holding up the arrival of spring.

I might have more of a spring in my step if I had the day to contemplate my affairs, read a book, gather the family for a meal and a movie or board game. It isn’t to be.

On this Leap Day, I think of all the people who were born in Leap Years past. These people must choose when to celebrate their birthday. February 28? March 1? (Both wouldn’t be bad). Wait every four years?

A friend of mine growing up had a Leap Year birthday. One day he was in elementary school running like a wildman at recess and swinging for the fences in Little League, the next he was a high school sophomore with a driver’s permit. How different a sixth grader is from a candidate for National Honor Society.

Maybe that’s what they mean by Leap Year. More like Leap Years, all the water under that bridge.

Four years ago, I lived in Mumbai, had just returned from Gujarat supporting a visit to the world’s largest cricket stadium by Prime Minister Modi and Donald Trump. Weeks later, all borders everywhere would be shut for months. My mother in law barely slipped out the country; she’d been in town to celebrate her mother’s Centennial. Naniji has since passed.

We are back to “normal,” and yet not back to normal, after that experience. The experience ground on for nearly a year, seemed about to lift then ground on once again, worse than before. It has left scars in memories and holes in families.

I guess this Leap Year, I’ll try to feel light and springy, to have a little skip in my step as we leap along out of winter. Things could be a lot worse than not having a day off.

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