Speaking of Madonna

Living in a beach town may not be heaven, but I appreciate it all the same. After work today, I went for a walk on the beach with my wife and our sons. The hard wind was chilling, but the setting sun provided almost enough warmth. My wife noted that it seemed weird that we could possibly be there in a month with nothing more than our bathing suits. Living in a state with four distinct seasons, I always anticipate the next one restlessly. Each season lasts just long enough, then lingers a bit, and then we embrace the new. Wonderful. Later, back home, after some pasta and while cleaning up a bit, I was beat and felt the need to listen to a Madonna song. This is not a nightly, weekly, or monthly need, but right then I wanted to dance to Like a Prayer. I set my ipod to repeat track, cranked the Bose, and danced round the kitchen table with the family as the song played over and over and over. One summer, mid-nineties, when I was teaching in Downeast Maine, I got a summer job in a t-shirt shop in Bar Harbor--the store also sold, oddly, Christmas tree ornaments. The job was mindless: refolding t-shirts all day and night. I didn't mind it at all. I read the paper, drank coffee, listened to music. In the store's collection of employee cd's was a Madonna single, the dance mixes from Evita, that I played just about every night after I closed as I refolded and restacked t-shirts--especially the Don't Cry For Me Argentina: Miami Mix Edit. It's not at all spectacular, but I could have listened to that tune forever.