A Year in The Life of Leah

This is my daughter, Leah. She will be turning 14 in a few months. She is a reader, a blogger, a history lover, a babysitter, a straight-“A” student, a feminist and, to the delight of her parents, she is learning to properly use “hospital corners” when she puts new sheets on her bed on laundry day. She is quite a kid. Her mother and I are proud of her. As things stand now, 2020 is going to be Leah’s year. Let me tell you why.

Leah has many big things on her agenda in 2020 but, arguably, the biggest is a trip she is taking at the end of May to Europe. Leah has always had a love of history. One day, a few years ago, while on a family outing with her grandparents, her Poppa and I happened to walk past a Travel Agency. In the window of this store was a poster for a guided trip to Canadian military sites in Europe to celebrate the centenary of the end of WWI. I looked at my Father-in-Law (Leah calls him, Poppa) and Poppa looked at me and we made a silent pledge to each other to make this trip happen for Leah. So, after a year or so of saving our coins, Poppa and I booked the trip. Leah found out on New Years Eve. Needless to say, she is excited. Poppa, Leah and I leave for Amsterdam on May 31st and will spend two days there. We hope to visit Anne Frank’s house while in that city. We will, also, get to go to see the Vimy Ridge Memorial (pictured above), Passchendaele, Juno Beach and Paris, too, during our ten-day excursion.

One place we want to visit during our trip is the Bayeaux War Cemetery. Bayeaux is approximately one half-hour south of Juno Beach. The reason for going there came about because on research Leah conducted into her own family tree. While researching relatives on her mother’s side of the family, she discovered a Great-Uncle named George Albert Eagle who was a soldier in WWII. He was a member of the Elgin regiment and was involved in the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. Unfortunately, Mr. Eagle was killed in a tank battle three days later. His body was never formally buried as he and his crew mates were burned beyond recognition in the fire that consumed their tank. However, his name is on a memorial plaque at the Bayeaux War Cemetery. We feel compelled to touch his name.

This brings me to a second, related but, different aspect of this trip. We will be visiting several cemeteries operated by The Commonwealth War Graves Commission during our trip. Leah has already researched the names of all of the soldiers from our hometown of Cobourg, who fought and died in the WWI and WWII and, who are buried in European cemeteries. In the photo above, there are plaques in our town hall that list the names of all soldiers from Cobourg who fought in both wars. The names with small crosses in front of them are men who died in battle. Our hope is that if we are scheduled to visit a cemetery where some of these Cobourg soldiers are buried, we will stop and pay our respects by placing a Canadian flag on the grave site (or a flower or a poppy or whatever we manage to have access to) and then, take a photo. If that soldier still has relatives in our area, we hope to contact them upon our return and let them know what we did and give them a copy of the photo as a keepsake for them. Leah and I and Poppa all feel that it is important to be respectful of the sacrifices these soldiers made on our behalf. Hopefully, this act will demonstrate that.

While our trip to the battlefields and cemeteries of Europe is a trip of a lifetime for Leah, Poppa and me, there are still plenty of big events left in Leah’s life that will have a profound affect on her as she moves forward. One of the biggest is that, in June, she will be graduating from Grade 8, which signifies the end of her elementary school experience. In the Fall, she will start High School!!!! As you read these words, Leah and her classmates are being visited in their Grade 8 classrooms by teachers from the various high schools in our area to discuss course selections for the upcoming school year. Her mother and I have already accompanied Leah to an Open House hosted by the high school closest to our home. At this high school, they offer a special academic opportunity called the International Baccalaureate Programme. This programme is an internationally-recognized programme of instruction that is quite rigorous and should prepare Leah well should she decide to pursue a university education in a few years time. She has had to apply to be accepted into the I.B. Programme. She will find out if she has qualified, a little later in the Spring. Hopefully, Leah will be accepted and will start off into the next phase of her life in a situation that pleases and excites her. Stay tuned for further updates as they become available.

As many of you know from your own experiences, one of the hallmarks of being a teenager is starting to earn your own money by getting a part-time job. Leah has already started down this path by babysitting children in our neighbourhood. But, she has loftier ambitions than that. Leah has her own blog called Nose In A Book. In her blog, Leah writes about books and history and life and the inter-connectedness of all three. In the short time she has had the blog, her posts have been featured on the Facebook pages of Scholastic Books, as well as, The Forest of Reading programme sponsored by the Ontario School Library Association. To give you a taste of how Leah writes, I am including a link to a post that she wrote about the TV programme, Anne With an E, which was based upon the Anne of Green Gables stories written by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Leah wrote this post because the Anne With An E tv show was being cancelled and she was trying to rally support to save it. Her efforts resulted in several people agreeing to sign an online petition she had linked to but, more than that, her post was read by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s grand-daughter who graciously messaged Leah privately to offer her thanks for Leah’s impassioned post. You can read the post here.

For Christmas, Leah was given a gift card to have business cards designed for her and printed off. The idea is that, perhaps, she can start using her love of reading and blogging as a way to make money in her teenage years. In the blogging world, there are posts that bloggers publish called sponsored posts. A sponsored post happens when a company wishes to pay a blogger to promote their product or to offer a product review. In Leah’s case, perhaps local authors seeking publicity would like to have Leah review their books in exchange for a small sum. Who knows how well this will work but, hopefully, it will help to put coins in Leah’s pocket. In any case, making money because of her brain and creativity is, in my opinion, a better option than burning her hands on french fry grease at a fast food restaurant.

In keeping with the theme of making money by using her brain, Leah and I hope to boost the number of History Talks we give at area Senior Citizens Homes. We are sending out new promotional letters this month to a dozen or so Assisted Living Centres within an hour’s drive from our home (We are enclosing one of her business cards with each letter, too). Leah and I do these Talks together for now, with the hope that, eventually, Leah will take them over herself. But, for now, we do them together. We have two Talks already created (Titanic and The Halifax Explosion) and a third under way (The Mystery of Oak Island). We charge $40.00 per talk, with all of the money going to Leah. If we are successful with the promotional letters we are sending out, Leah stands to make over $1,000.00, simply because of her love for History. In this photo, Leah is discussing the wreck site of the Titanic with seniors from the Rosewood Retirement Home in Cobourg.

Being a big sister is also a major part of Leah’s world. Sophie is growing up, too and, together they make quite a team. Sometimes they argue and storm off to their separate bedrooms! But, in the end, they are always sisters first and when they head out into the world; especially, if the situation is a new one, the sisters will often greet that new challenge by holding hands and facing it together. Those are the moments that make Keri and I the proudest.

Leah stands to have a wonderful year to come, if all goes well. She is fully deserving of the good things that happen to her because she is a terrific young lady. I am thrilled that she is as immersed into books and history as she is. But, as parents, her mother and I never forget that she is an individual in her own right. She is charting her own course in ways that feel comfortable to her. We support Leah and strive to help her have as happy a life as we can. So, bring on 2020, I say! I can’t wait to see how it all turns out for my girls. Hopefully, it will be our best year yet.