For years, I’d go to the movies and see guys doing Boston accents and think, “Oh please, God, I hope I never have to do that.”
~Michael Keaton
I am the product of a mixed marriage — my mother was a Red Sox fan from Boston and my father was born and bred in New York City. I live in Greenwich, Connecticut, in staunch Yankees territory, but only twenty miles south of the Red Sox Nation border. The American League East is at war in my blood. My cousin on my mother’s side has worked at Fenway Park his whole life and he gave me a Red Sox hoodie that I love wearing when I am safely outside my local area.
But where I live? Forget it. I dared to wear my Red Sox hat once while walking in our neighborhood. And sure enough, I took it off for one second when I got hot, and a bird pooped right on my head — a big pile right where the emblem with the two red socks had been. Even the local birds had noted my treachery.
Boston is on my mind a lot because my son and daughter-in-law live there now, surrounded by people who sound just like my mother. Why do I bring this up? Because I remember fondly the day more than twenty years ago when I was talking to the kids about “foreign countries” and they insisted they had already been to one. They explained that every time we visited my parents we went to a foreign country.
In reality, my parents lived twenty minutes away. Where had they gotten the idea that Grandma and Grandpa lived in a foreign country? Well, they explained, Grandma had a foreign accent and she lived in a place with a foreign name — Chappaqua — in New York State. So “New York” must be a foreign country. I had no idea that for years I was getting credit for taking my children on exciting weekend trips out of the country!
My mother’s “foreign” accent was always a source of amusement in our family. When she drove me to my freshman year of college, she actually said the very clichéd “oh look, they opened the gates so we can pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd” as we pulled up to the front of my dorm. I always teased my mother and dared her to pronounce words with an “r.” She would struggle and slowly enunciate the words, with only the faintest trace of an “r” no matter how hard she tried. But give her a word like “idea” and up popped an “r” right where it didn’t belong. What’s an “idear” anyway?
One of my favorite stories about my mother’s accent was when she tried to buy some dark chocolate bark a few years ago in a candy store in touristy Annapolis, Maryland. Mom told the salesclerk that she wanted some of the “dahk bahk” in the glass case. Considering all the foreign tourists who visit Annapolis, the home of the Naval Academy, the clerk assumed that English was not my mother’s first language. She explained that she couldn’t understand my mother’s accent, so would she please spell what she wanted? My mother proceeded: “D-A-AH-K B-A-AH-K.” No luck. She left the store empty-handed, foiled by her Boston accent.
After my mother had a stroke, which resulted in her losing some language skills, I had to pull the speech therapists aside and explain to them that her Boston accent was not the result of aphasia. I didn’t want them to try to reinstate an “r” sound that had never been there anyway. They had actually been trying to teach her how to say words with R’s in them, so they appreciated the heads-up.
At my mother’s memorial service I told some stories about her various unique characteristics, including her Boston accent and how she was often misunderstood. My cousin who works at Fenway “Pahk” came up to me after and said it was the best funeral speech he ever heard but he didn’t really understand my comments about my mother’s accent because he “had never noticed that she had one.”
And that’s why I love going to Boston, where the pahking is difficult and the snowy, cold winters are hahd. In the meantime, I still get to talk to the other side of the family, the New York side, which can’t pronounce R’s either. It wasn’t until my Park Avenue aunt died that I learned that her best friend’s last name wasn’t “Shera,” but was “Sherer.” And we love to tease my Brooklyn-born husband about his R’s. And his L’s too. He can’t for the life of him pronounce one of his favorite beverages, the “Arnold Palmer,” so he always has to order a half-iced-tea-half-lemonade.
~Amy Newmark
