Five Leap Days
Time crunch: February 29ths since 2008
February 29th is a quirky, not-quite-anomaly in our time-bound world. “Today isn’t even like a real day,” said our 13-year-old this morning. He paused. “So maybe we won’t have any homework.” I laughed and then reminded him that while it’s not an annual occurrence, Leap Day is a regular one, albeit not often. It’s just strange enough to feel, well, a little weird.
Today has prompted some nostalgic reflection on my part. Here’s what the last four February 29ths have looked like in our family.
2008: It was a Friday. I was finishing my coursework for grad school, but I was probably home that day (ah, the halcyon days of scheduling days off). Jon was the sole pastor of a single parish, still in the honeymoon phase of the ministry. Our oldest living child was six months old in my womb.
2012: A Wednesday, our lives were overflowing with activities and young life. Jon was in the trenches of being a pastor, as well as serving us well as a husband and father. I was crazy tutored online from 4:30 to 6:30 in the morning, wrangled three kids who were 3.5 years, 20 months, and 2.5 months old, and then Jon and I hosted a youth supper and movie before Lent service that evening. (Whew. Thanks to our online calendar to tell me about that day’s events. No wonder I don’t remember much from those days!)
2016: A gray, cold, likely snowy Minnesota Monday. We were homeschooling five kids who were 7.5 years, 5.5 years, and 4 years old, and chasing a 2-year-old, and snuggling (and beginning to chase) a 10-month-old. I took smiley and goofy pictures of the four oldest kids in front of the Melissa and Doug calendar pictured above.
2020: It was a Saturday at the beginning of COVID fear. Now in Wyoming, we likely had a relatively quiet day after a busy school week, with seven kids who were 11.5 years, 9.5 years, 8 years, 6 years, 4.5 years, almost 3 years, and around two months in utero (we’d lost a son in 2019). We’d just started Lent the prior Wednesday so were moving into this more somber, reflective season.
And today, in 2024: it’s a Thursday, and the quiet outside is deafening after days of roaring (wind warnings are common this time of year). I edited this at 2:51am after feeding the infant, who’s moving from cooing to squawking. And I’m thinking about our eight kids who are 15.5 years, 13.5 years, 12 years, 10 years, 8.5 years, 6.5 years, 3 years, and seven weeks old. Jon has been a pastor for almost eighteen years now. And we’ll celebrate twenty years of marriage later this year. I’ll have a fun lunch and playdate in a little while, and we’re planning on taking all the kids to the Y to burn some energy later. We all still live in the same house, and this, I know, will not be the case forever, until time immortal.
This kind of compressed reflection of time, these five Leap Days, is special and also unnerving. “Where has the time gone?” is one of those rhetorical conversational questions that come up a lot, but it hits hard today.
What will 2028 look like? If Jesus doesn’t come back first, we will have—God willing—kids who are 19.5, 17.5, 16, 14, 12.5, 10.5, 7, and 4 years old. That’s one legal adult, three possible drivers, four teenagers, two tweens, and eight “schoolers,” with young people in college, high school, middle school, elementary school, and down to pre-K. We might not have another toddler or infant in the house.
As my friend reminded me with the great little plaque, the days are long, but the years are short. Truly they are, with hardship and joys and weird all together. Lord, grant that I not take any of our days or years for granted.
Happy Leap Day.