Mary Poppins & the 1960’s, Boiled Cabbage & Odoratus

Two sessions, High School and Middle School…

When we try to control creativity, there is a sad truth to realize— it never works. I am constantly reminding myself of this vital lesson with my students when I want to ‘steer’ the session. In the last two weeks of this school year, by letting go, I had two amazing and spontaneous discussions in my sessions with a sophomore and seventh grader…

Mary Poppins & the 1960s’s: “We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats!” I have been astounded in my tutoring for the past year over how many of my high school students cannot coin the decades of 'The Civil Rights Movement.' They cannot place the 1960s-1970s in their historical frame of reference. They cannot describe the multitude of movements that occurred during those years of time. Was it only eight years ago that my high school class was astounded in U.S History to learn about the Freedom Rides? Of the Orangeburg Massacre? Or how African-American students had to be led to all-white colleges under police guard for their own safety? Of America’s “dirty war,” and Women Suffragettes? Now we hear of George Floyd, BLM, police brutality, and threats of tyranny once again. Are ‘current’ events so prevalent for teenage students today that they are no longer shocked by something that was still scandalous less than a decade ago?

But I digress… for this session turned into a fun and spontaneous class where I showed one of my sophomore high school students a movie clip from Mary Poppins, 1964. This Youtube clip shows the musical lyrics for Mrs. Banks’ solo as she returns from a Women’s Suffragette Meeting— where a woman chained herself to the Prime Minister’s carriage and another was carried off to prison throwing pamphlets in the air! “Our daughters’ daughters’ will adore us, and they’ll sing in grateful chorus, ‘Well done, Sister Suffragette!’” (Sister Suffragette)

Boiled Cabbage & Odoratus: In another session earlier this month, I had became overwhelmed by a smell wafting from the kitchen where I knew my mother was cooking. While waiting for a worksheet to load and in a moment of rapport during my online session, I mentioned to my middle school student how I’d become distracted by the smell, as the scent strangely reminded me of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Which was an impossibility, because half of my family is gluten-free (including my mother), and I highly doubted that my college sister would be extensively baking on a day of college exams. Nonetheless, nostalgia had been triggered. My mouth was watering. Only ten minutes later, I went to reheat my coffee while my student silently wrote for a couple of minutes on his own— and I was able to discover what my mom had been cooking. Boiled red cabbage, in vinegar.

What?

And then it hit me. The power of association. Of memory. Connotation. Allusion. Analogy. Symbols. Everything we use in literature, I had experienced psychologically. I had smelled the boiled red cabbage— a nostalgic, childhood food my mom had cooked since I was a two— and my mind supplanted an associated image to explain the emotion that’d been triggered by the scent. My student and I had a great laugh when I returned and I told him it’d been a leafy vegetable in oil, rather than golden cookies baking, that I had smelled; but then it became a lesson.

In a previous writers’ conference I’ve attended, and now affirmed through personal experience, smell is one of the most associative senses of the human perception. It triggers memories, emotions. Pain, love; tears, laughter. Can you remember the scent of your baby blanket? Your favorite, childhood toy? What about the classroom that made you anxious in school? Was it the smell of the dry erase markers in the room, or the smell of sweat in the gym locker rooms? Odoratus is a latin adjective that means ‘fragrant, or perfumed” (Latin Definition). What perfumes and fragrances trigger your memories? How can we use them in our own narratives and poems, as a sense that is highly disregarded yet so important for our audience’s empathy?

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“Latin Definition for: Odoratus, Odorata, Odoratum.” Latin Dictionary and Grammar Resources, Latdict, https://latin-dictionary.net/definition/28547/odoratus-odorata-odoratum.

"Sister Suffragette Mary Poppins 1964 edit." YouTube, uploaded by Daniel Heib, 12 Dec 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLKFJUHQXi8