Leap Year Last Time
The last time Leap Day rolled around, I was visiting an old friend in Clermont, Florida. On Saturday, February 29, 2020, we sat together at a Lake County craft fair while she sold her beautiful jewelry. Later, we strolled for a mile or so in a tortoise preserve near their home.
On Monday that week, the first week of March, 2020, I kayaked for seven glorious hours along the waters of Blue Spring State Park. When my cell phone battery ran down, I drove back to my friend’s house “the old-fashioned way (directions written on a napkin!).” So says a journal that recently resurfaced. In it, I revisited life through May that year and then abandoned that particular journal for some reason.
The week after Leap Day 2020, I joined hundreds of others in Tampa at the EMS Today conference. Since the late 1970s, that conference has been a nearly-annual touchstone for me involving old friends and fond memories from the dawn of modern EMS, when I was a Denver paramedic. In Tampa, while greeting familiar faces and leaning in for handshakes and hugs, I remember we often mentioned offhandedly, “you think this Covid thing is a...Thing?”
My rediscovered journal carries me back to that time, through the days of the conference and the journey home, where I wrote mundane commentaries about little things: picking up my computer, feeding the birds, admiring my dog asleep at my feet. Who could have then imagined what we did not yet know, that a teensy virus was well on its way to invading the entire planet. In mere weeks, it spanned the globe, bringing death and heartache to us all. Its trajectory was astonishing.
On Friday the thirteenth of March, 2020, my journal captured those early days: “Interesting times. In just one week—in ONE week—the coronavirus (COVID-19) has swept like a tsunami into our lives, leading in just a week to a complete national emergency...
“Schools, universities, venues, sports (including NBA and NHL and March Madness)—all shut down. Ended.
“Italy, Norway, others—shut down. Pandemonium, I hear, in European airports.
“No one is going anywhere.
“It’s eerie, and a bit unnerving. I’m situated well with isolation and supplies, but it is on my mind that 7 days ago I was at an international conference and that I went through one of the largest airports in the world two times, 7 and 14 days ago...
“...This thing has potential to be very, very bad.”
Possibly for obvious reasons, the frog is associated with Leap Day!
From then through the end of May, my journal reflects my quiet and, thankfully, healthy traverse through the early days of humanity’s collective nightmare.
So here comes Leap Year, once again. The Earth has spent 365-1/4 days orbiting the sun each year. We get this extra make-up day, February 29th so that human calendar time can get squared up with time as measured by the universe. Pretty cool.
Leap Year 2024 finds the world largely back to business as usual. Sure, there’s the occasional person wearing a mask, but there’s precious little social distancing, loads of travel, bustling restaurants, and stadiums packed with fans. The hue of the sky has once again been rendered smoggy, and the conversation around the dinner table about vaccinations tends towards flu and RSV.
Think back. All that isolation, all that fear. All that mask fashion! All the neighbors, coming out at 7pm to make a grateful racket for the first responders and essential workers. The clear skies, and wildlife sightings in places which had seen none for decades. The empty streets and highways and airports. The Zoom classes. It’s like the village of Brigadoon, from that 1950s musical where a mysterious Scottish village appears for only one day every 100 years, and then recedes back into the mists.
As Leap Day 2024 approaches, it seems appropriate to recall and somehow honor the passage of time. On Leap Day 2020, no one knew what we were facing. No one yet understood the “novel virus” or its capacity for devastation. Bravo to the scientists and doctors who applied their knowledge and experience to tackle an event with global consequences. I thank my leaders for their caution, and feel shame for the way so many were lambasted and vilified. It took time to get our human arms around this microscopic beast, while so many people worldwide were lost. Others will still die of Covid-19 and its variants, but it’s no longer the dire threat it was in those fearsome days following Leap Day 2020.
Of course, humankind will always face great challenges and huge problems. That’s the nature of life. It does go on. But from a viewpoint of gratitude for the good things that have evolved in the wake of those dreadful times that began four years ago, I welcome Leap Day, 2024. I hope you do, too.
