are all products of our mother and father.  If that mother or father should change, a different person would be created.  So, by the fact that her mother married her father and bore her, she owes her existence to her.

The third time was when the fire occurred in their home.  The narrator was trapped in her upstairs room.  There was no way that the firefighters could get to her.  Her mother, using her trapeze skills, swung herself up to the window, grabbed her daughter, and jumped to the trampoline below held by the firefighters. 

Foreshadowing is used in this piece.  The reader knows that the girl is going to survive the fire because in the third paragraph, she says,

                “I owe her my existence three times.” (pg 1)

There is symbolism in the lamb figurine on top of her sister’s grave.  The lamb represents a young one who had died.

As each event unfolds in the story, they become more personal to the narrator, increasing the tension.  The death of her mother’s first husband is separate from her life.  Her parents’ meeting was the cause of her life, and the fire was a survival story of her life.  Each one involved the narrator more and more. 

The narrator means that her mother saved her own life or her daughter’s life three times.

The story describes a trapeze artist’s daughter. She explains the impact her mother had on her life, specifically by saving her life. The narrator feels that her mother is a very unique and interesting person, and she wishes she knew her better.

The first time her mother saved her life, she actually saved herself. In saving herself, she saved her unborn daughter.  Her mother saved her life by avoiding an accident during a big windstorm.

The first time was when she saved herself. In the town square a replica tent pole, cracked and splintered, now stands cast in concrete. It commemorates the disaster that put our town smack on the front page of the Boston and New York tabloids.

Her mother was in a trapeze accident when lightning struck while she was performing. The narrator considers this the second time her life was saved, because it was in the hospital after the accident that her mother met her father.

I owe my existence, the second time then, to the two of them and the hospital that brought them together. That is the debt we take for granted since none of us asks for life. It is only once we have it that we hang on so dearly.

If her mother had died, or had not been in the accident at all, her mother and father would not have met and the narrator would not exist. So again, while saving her own life her mother saved hers, by creating the possibility of her being born.

The third time her mother saved her life was the most spectacular. There was a fire, and the narrator was trapped inside. She was only seven years old, but there was no chance of rescue. Since the firefighters could do nothing, her mother took a literal leap of faith to save her.

I didn't see her leap through air, only heard the sudden thump and looked out my window. She was hanging by the backs of her heels from the new gutter we had put in that year, and she was smiling. I was not surprised to see her, she was so matter-of-fact.

The narrator’s mother is clearly an amazing woman. Telling this story is her way of attempting to get closer to her. Her mother faces many close calls. The narrator recounts the impact that her mother had on her life through the most spectacular events in her mother’s life.

In the exposition of "The Leap," the narrator declares that she owes her mother her life: the first time is the day that her mother saved her own life; the second, that her mother married again and was in the hospital that brought her and her husband together; the third, that her mother saved her life by rescuing her from the burning house.

Certainly,the third time is the most active, powerful act of saving that the mother commits, for she directly puts herself in danger when she is none herself. In the other two instances, the saving of her daughter is secondary rather than primary: In the first instance with the lightning hitting the pole, the mother chooses to save herself, thus, saving her her unborn baby--

As he [her husband] swept past her on the wrong side, she could have grasped his ankle,...and gone down clutching him. Instead, she changed direction--

in the second instance at the hospital, the depressed mother is renewed by her love for her new husband who also rehabilitates her arm, thus allowing the mother to be a better parent to the narrator.

But, in the third instance the mother actively and purposefully places herself in immediate danger in order to save her daughter with no concern about her own safety. 

This is a great question. The narrator clearly tells us that she owes her "existence" to her mother three times, yet in the story she only explictly refers to the first and second way in which her mother saved her, telling us of how Anna saved herself from a tragic circus accident that resulted in the death of her then-husband, and then secondly refering to the fire that threatened to burn the narrator when she was a girl. The narrator at no stage in her narrative explicitly tells us what the third time was, however, if we look at the story and the narrator's present state and why she has come back to live with her mother, perhaps we can infer that this third time is the way in which her mother's solitude has given the narrator the excuse that she needs to flee her life and return home:

Since my father's recent death, there is no one to read to her, which is why I returned in fact, from my failed life where the land is flat.

We are given no more details about the narrator's "failed life," but given the way in which the narrator is similarly unforthcoming about the third way in which her mother saved her life, perhaps we can connect the two. The death of the narrator's father and her mother's need for somebody to read to her could have enabled the narrator to escape from what appears to be a very difficult and painful situation.

The first time the narrator is saved by her mother is during the trapeze act. Anna is blindfolded as part of the act. When the storm strikes, she chooses to save herself rather than go down with her husband. The blindfold is either ironic or an example of foreshadowing because, later in life, Anna is sightless because of cataracts. In the process of falling, she removes her blindfold and catches hold of a searing hot wire. When Anna's hands heal, the lines are gone, leaving "only the blank scar tissue of a quieter future." Here again, we have a slight foreshadowing of fire and an inclination about Anna's future because she trades trapeze "flying" for a safer family life.

Anna learns to read from her second husband, the narrator's father. So, the first tragic (and actual) leap led to the next symbolic leap in Anna's life: marrying again and learning to read.

The third and final leap is when Anna rescues her daughter (narrator) from their burning house. Two of these leaps are actual leaps. The second is the symbolic leap Anna makes in changing her life. The metaphor of the leap can be attributed to any gesture a mother makes to ensure her daughter's safety. Erdrich could have added other "leaps" or sacrifices that Anna may have made for her daughter. This is the theme of the leap: each represents a mother's sacrifice. And also note that the narrator moves back in with her mother to take care of her and read to her. This is the narrator's way of returning the favor or of making a reciprocal leap for her mother.

"The Leap" is a short story by Louise Erdrich. The story is narrated by the daughter of Anna, a former trapeze artist, and portrays the complex feelings of the daughter for her mother by recounting the mother's history.

The first "leap" of the story is the one in which Anna manages to save her own life when the tent in which she is performing is struck by lightning. Had Anna not managed to save her own life, the daughter would never have been born.

The second major act of courage occurs when Anna is in the hospital after her fall. She meets the doctor who will become her new husband, trusts him, and learns to read, something difficult and alien to her world of the circus. Her leap of faith is what enables the daughter of her second marriage to come into the world.

The third major act of courage on the part of Anna is a literal leap as well. When the daughter was seven, the family home caught fire, and Anna used the skills of balance and agility that she developed as a trapeze artist to rescue her daughter from the burning house.

The narrator claims that she owes her life to her mother three times. More precisely, she says she owes her "existence" to her mother based on three events. The first is during the trapeze accident. Her mother has a chance to grab her husband's ankle as they are falling but decides, in mid air, to protect herself and her unborn child. This child was the narrator's sister who was eventually stillborn. By saving herself, rather than risking her and her unborn daughter's deaths, she stays alive. Therefore, she will be alive in order to eventually have another daughter: the narrator. 

The second time the narrator credits her mother for her existence is the fact that her mother met her (the narrator's) father in the hospital. So, the two events are linked. The mother saves herself, the first husband is killed, and the mother meets her next husband in the hospital. This second husband is to be the narrator's father. 

The final time is when the mother directly saves her daughter. The house catches on fire and no one can reach her daughter upstairs. Being a seasoned acrobat and trapeze artist, the mother climbs a ladder, then up the tree, and makes the "leap" to the window. As they fall toward the firemen's net, the narrator has an experience like being in the womb again: 

I felt the brush of her lips and heard the beat of her heart in my ears, loud as thunder, long as the roll of drums. 

The narrator in this story is the daughter of a woman who was once part of a trapeze act in a circus that came to a sticky end. The first of the ways in which the narrator owes her existence to her mother is that her mother, Anna of the Flying Avalons, once saved herself from certain death when performing as part of this act. When the tent in which Anna was performing was struck by lightning, Anna was able to pivot and change her course as her partner fell, burning her hands but saving her own life. Obviously, if she had not done this, the narrator would never have been born.

Next, Anna met the narrator's father in a hospital in which she learned to read and write, a "form of flying" she substituted for her previous form of literal flight. The narrator says this hospital provided the second arena in which she owes her life to Anna: if Anna had not gone to hospital, she would never have met the narrator's father.

The third time Anna performed an act which led to her daughter's continued existence was when, during a house fire, she sacrificed her pride and her own safety to leap up to her daughter's bedroom and save her from death.

"The Leap" by Louise Erdrich is organized around the three ways in which the narrator owes her existence to her mother's choices and acts. All of these three choices involves "leaps", two physical and one metaphorical.

Anna, the narrator's mother, was raised as a circus performer and was part of a trapeze act called the Flying Avalons with her husband Harold Avalon. As the Flying Avalons were performing their grand finale at a show in New Hampshire, lightning struck the tent. Anna managed to survive by removing her blindfold in mid-air and grabbing a guy wire but Harold died. This leap, which enabled her to preserve her own life, was one act that led to the narrator's existence.

As Anna was recuperating in the hospital, she met the doctor who became the narrator's father. In leaving the circus world and learning to read and assimilate to middle class society, Anna took a second "leap" leading to the narrator's existence. 

The third leap leading to the daughter's existence was one from a tree branch to rescue her young daughter from a burning house.