Today had me thinking about exactly what I was doing four years ago.  Actually, I should say that it only got me thinking for a brief moment about what I was doing four years ago. This is of course because it was the very start of COVID Times. Ah yes: the moments where lockdown was happening in Italy and I had folks in the U.S. texting me, “I am so sorry for what you all are going through.”  Back then I remember thinking to myself, “Oh this is coming your way.” And now I find that I still have next to little interest in researching back to what I was doing in February 2020.

So I have no idea what exactly I was doing during COVID’s unceremonious Leap Day. No doubt in the afternoon, I tuned in to Italian television to hear the Health Minister representatives announcing how many people had died that day. I still had very little Italian in my vocabulary, but for sure I had learned that purtroppo meant “unfortunately”. And that one word was the key to listen hard, because that’s when you would next hear the number of mortalities provided by the government. Stomach turning, anxiety-inducing times. No doubt I was pacing my apartment quite a bit.  The idea of February having  a Leap Day at all was the least interesting feature back then. 

And even if I try to think back to any other Leap Day in my life, I really can’t think of anything remarkable. I do know that February on the whole was a dreary winter time period in New England. Short days with frozen ground and limited sun. Waking up in the morning for school and it is still dark outside. And so it is possible that I would only sigh about the fact that February had to be one day longer, every four years. We as humans tend to like playing mental games while negotiating the calendar year.  

And that is probably the one thing that has not changed in all of these years. Each morning I wake up and have already sliced up plans for my near, mid, and long-term existence. Stuff I need to do, tasks that ever-so-gradually call for my attention. Whether or not all of these plans come to fruition is beside the point; the real objective in breaking apart the days is to make it all seem manageable. So what’s one extra day in February? Especially as an adult when all of the months feel as though they are picking up speed. 

Now that we’re at the end of it, I find that, like revisiting those COVID days, I have no interest in researching back up on why our planetary rotation needs to do this Leap Year thing at all. Maybe it’s because I felt a bit like this month steamrolled over me and I’m just coming out of it and allowing my body to come back into shape. That’s what this day is doing for me. A short breath before we move into the next month. I already have work emails telling me about “Pi Day” and I just know that St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are just around the corner.

The trees will soon be regrowing their leaves and we’ll be into full-blown spring. A great time indeed, but yet another indicator that we’re nearly halfway through the year. The Leap Day, as it turns out, is a term that is underutilized. Because I feel as though we adults are all fully engaged in Leap Day contact sports every single day of the year. 

There’s lots to come, and plenty of gut-twisting news in the headlines– new and seeming lower points in human civilization that jockey to compete with COVID’s wreckage. It’s all too much to even attempt to comment on here. And so I’ve got one of my old high school albums playing in the background as I cook a recipe. A bit of a revisit to the past. I’m taking a Leap Day off to think about simpler times. Pink Floyd laser shows in the Hayden Planetarium in Boston. When the days all seemed long and expansive. A bit of a change of pace on the bonus day that we got this year. It doesn’t matter to anyone else, but for me, I think it was time well spent.