How Is This for an Interesting Assignment? Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

Monday, October 18, 2021

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli, Contributor

 

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Her assignment gave me pause.

“What did your mother smell like?” I looked at the instructor, Barbara Lazaar Ascher. “Yes,” she continued, the corners of her mouth turned up a bit.  “That’s right, mothers have their own smell; see what you come up with.”

The writing course in Chicago was entitled “Writing for Your Senses.” Intrigued, I had been eager to sign up, and I was not disappointed.  Her fascinating assignments probed our senses as she encouraged us to write with more description, more feeling, more involvement.

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If she had asked what my elementary school classroom smelled like, perhaps it would have been easier because library paste, ink, and chalk would have quickly surfaced. If she asked what my grandmother’s Sunday sauce smelled like, I might have done OK. But my mother?

It was fun when she sent us to the Chicago Art Museum to write about a painting. I smiled when she asked us to eavesdrop on a conversation and write an ending for it. But a mother’s smell? I hesitated with hand on chin and eyes down.

My mother loved clothes and their accoutrements . . . jewelry, scarves, gloves, etc. That image came and went. I couldn’t garner a smell. For a moment, the smells of perfume wafted under my nose. I don’t quite remember them though the words Tabu and Estee Lauder came to mind. But those were names, not smells, and I really didn’t remember anything much of them.

The smells of coffee (ever the pot on the stove), frying meatballs, Sunday’s pasta, and potato croquettes (one of her specialties) fleetingly jumped out, but I did not want to write something mundane, even though it evoked emotion and pleasant memories. And then it sprang to me.

My mother smelled of rubber! That’s it. Rubber. I remember rubber.

It was not easy for my parents in those days, and my mother decided that she needed to work. Along with the need to help her family, she just plain wanted to work because she was dealing with the unsettling, anxiety-provoking medical condition of an overactive thyroid, and expending energy was therapeutic, almost necessary.

Arming her sister for a jolt of courage, they both took the job of winding golf balls (with rubber elastic) at the US Rubber Company on the three to eleven shift. It was a challenging task because the pay was based on piece work, and they felt the need to hustle along every evening. When she came home, still full of energy, she ported something else, that smell, rubber. I admired her. Never complaining, she worked hard for good reasons.

Though I was a bit disconcerted by her hard labor, I was proud of what she did for our family. And sometimes she brought home a golf ball.

When I read my essay to the class, they were quiet, nodding with a familiar approval, pleased with my honest recollection and courage to write of it.

I liked the teacher’s singular smile.

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.”  Learn more HERE.

 

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