Today is that most peculiar of days, Leap Day. I won’t attempt to explain the history of this strange phenomenon of the calendar, as it is well delineated in any number of books, articles and websites.
What I will say is twofold.
First, my surname is Leap. Admittedly, in ages past it might have been Leib or Leep or some other variation in the countries of my ancestors. But for now, it’s plain old Leap. In the South, where I live, it is typically heard as Lee, presumably because if you’re name is Lee, venerable name that it is, that’s good enough for most people. They needn’t hear the ‘p’ at the end.
It has been heard as Leet, Leek, Leer, Leaf and assorted others.
But Leap it remains.
Second, however, is the fact that my wife Jan was born on February 29, Leap Day.
Those two facts became intricately intertwined when we first met in our college days, and far more so when we married in 1990. The connection stronger and stronger with every passing year (normal and Leap).
So the woman born on Leap Day married the man named Leap.
If you read Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles (which I highly recommed), you’ll know that the hero, Uhtred, often says ‘Wyrd bio ful araed,’ which in Anglo-Saxon means something like ‘fate is wholly inexorable.’
Given that Jan and I are Christian, not pagan as Uhtred is, we might alternately say (as in the Lord’s Prayer), ‘thy Kingdom come, thy will be done,’ confident that God’s guidance directs all our steps; whether we realize it or not, in time and eternity. Including the person we marry.
What I mean to say is, how can a man named Leap help but marry a girl born in a Leap year on the very Leap day?
But it’s appropriate. Jan used to say, when we first me, that time was merely a construct, a thing unreal that we can do with as we please.
Personally I have always been powerfully moved by the Christian idea of eternal life. It makes sense to me, this wonderful life being far too short for all it’s delights and for the healing of all its wounds. I have also been intrigued by extreme long life on earth as described in writings of the patriarchs. I believe that in ancient times men and women indeed lived remarkably long lives.
I have come to believe that there are ways to understand time that we just don’t think about. That we live in perceived time, or Chronos in the Greek, but that some time, some events, are in God’s time outside ‘time.’ That has been called, in Greek, Kairos. I believe that the times intersect in ways hard for us to grasp.
https://greekcitytimes.com/2022/08/14/ancient-greeks-two-word-time/
I will say that having a wife who is young at heart, who has a heart of compassion and kindness, a lover of aged and infant alike, is one who skips along on the surface of the river of time. And one could say she dips her toe in it only every four years or so.
She will argue with me that this is untrue, that she is like the rest of us. But I have been watching and I disagree. And my soul, I have always been assured, is quite old so I know what I see; or have seen.
So happy birthday to the Leap girl who married the Leap boy.
May time ever be your servant, my love.
Edwin. Leap, that is.
There once was a doctor named Leap,
Whose patients would flock to, like sheep.
And the love of this man
For a woman named Jan
Was a torrent so wide and so deep.
John -great poem. Here is my attempt:
I have a good friend, a physician named Leap.
Whose wisdom and joy lifts us like a mountain so steep.
His shared stories of life become the memories we keep.
His love of his wife and family fill us with the joys that we weep.
Each evening I seek peace by reading from Ed to help me sleep.
By doing so, my wife reports, I slumber without making a peep.