Memories of Jamie Reaney about Ruth Naomi (Nanny)
Note: Jamie was a very close childhood friend of both my mother and her sister, Loie. He wrote many plays and poems, was frequently published and had quite a few plays performed at Stratford. In reading these plays, I could pick out the characters that represented my mother and Loie. One of those plays was, ''Colors in the Dark.’'
How can we say your life is over
When so many things you said and did
Still, and always will,
Reverberate in our minds, our memories
And our hearts?
You were a mother who once said to me
As you were giving Bonnie and Christine
Violin lessons on their tiny fiddles,
You said that you aim was to give them
Such a happy childhood it would keep them
No matter what happened to them,
Happy for the rest of their lives
First time I saw you to remember you
Was on September 1, 1933
My first day at Elmhurst School.
With young Maxine you walked up the road
To talk to the teacher, Miss Coveney at the door, and then walked back up the road,
Over the railway tracks and down the Old Road
To where you were living with a second daughter,
Loie,
Not old enough yet for school.
Actually, I would have seen you sooner,
Because you played piano at the Sunday School,
Also held at Elmhurst School,
Where your father, Charles Jones, was
Superintendent
Such hymns as Beulah Land and Shall we Gather at the River
With arpeggios and extra chordings
You rippled up and down the piano
In a very rhythmic, slightly jazzy way
That was white bluesy.
Above the piano, by the way,
Was a picture of Ruth and Naomi.
When, later in 1979, in an interview,
I taped your piano playing,
You were teaching, that way of playing to others
You said: ‘'I've taught everybody
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick
maker,
Even my own doctor.’'
On your first day at school, over at
Brocksden,
Your brothers drove you over there
In a buckboard wagon.
A tramp drowned himself in nearby Paff’s
pond.
You remembered his shoes hanging up
For a long time on the back door of your
parents’ house.
Aged twelve, you started to learn guitar.
Years later, during the Elvis Presley period,
Mothers anxious of their sons to make a
fortune
Brought them to you for lessons
For so long you finally had to learn the 14th
position.
On cold days you liked reading
With your feet in the over,
An unchopped stick of wood
Burning down in the stove.
Piano you played for Stratford’s first radio
station,
K 10, on hot summer days, you put talcum
powder
On the keys or your fingers would slip. You ran a music store, you drove a car, Broke your wrist when you bumped into a freight train
At the Albert Street crossing.
You took drawing lessons, correspondence
course.
I remember coats of provincial arms you
drew
For a Women’s Institute booth at the Fair.
You did a poster for my first play
At Stratford Collegiate
You once said to me, ‘’Jimmie, you can’t stop progress.’'
I don’t know about that, but I know that thinking of you
Will always stop time.
James Reaney