Madonna and Me: On the Borderline

 

Did you ever think, when New Year’s Day rolls around, it might be time to sneer at those paltry resolutions and go for a really big change? Leave your old self behind and step into a whole new identity perhaps?

I apologize for being late with my post here, but that’s because I’ve been cooking up a really exciting idea. How’s this for starting off 2015 with some flair? Pastor’s Wife takes a big dose of Pop Queen and starts a rigorous daily regime of singing and dancing, not to mention bright red lipstick, through the cold New Hampshire winter.

This all started with a family trip up to Canada, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I always knew Madonna (the singer, not the mother of Jesus) and I had something in common. Beyond the fact that we’re the same age, that is. In truth, she’s about exactly a year younger than I am, but c’mon, that’s almost nothing. We were toddling around at the same time way back when, and now we’re both mothers of at least a few children, trying to manage our empires. OK, so I don’t exactly have an empire, but I do try to keep my family’s stuff more or less organized.  Sure, there are other differences: she grew up in Detroit, in a Catholic family; I spent my childhood on Long Island, not attending church; she lost her mother way too young; I was lucky to have mine for many years. She used her talent to skyrocket to fame; I dabbled in the usual schoolgirl things and managed to stay under the radar.

I just have always had this feeling that in some ways, we’re probably not all that different and would probably even hit it off if we got to hang out together.

Ridiculous, I know. But maybe it’s just borderline ridiculous. After all, Madonna had a blockbuster hit song in the 80’s with the very same name as the kind of place where I was just last week! And, even though the song is about the churning of mixed emotions involved in love, it’s also a kind of beguiling statement of a woman’s need to maintain some control over her own life. In my opinion, it’s also just got a fabulous energetic sound that makes you want to get up and move.

Borderline, feels like I’m going to lose my mind. You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline.

These days–and always, really–there are plenty of borders between countries that are in the news. It’s been almost a year since Russia marched right on into Ukraine as if it was business as usual. Practically anywhere in the Middle East, borders are contentious. Lebanon, trying to stem the flood of Syrians refugees coming in, just announced a whole new set of restrictions for their border with that war-torn country. The debate over immigration policies raging in our own country has put a renewed focus on our southern border with Mexico. In fact, just yesterday Obama was meeting with President Pena Nieto, about a whole pack of troubles.

Meanwhile, the boundary that stretches thousands of miles between the U.S. and Canada, through a whole lot of states and some huge provinces, seems tranquil by comparison. Since 9/11, things have tightened up some, and for good reason, but for the most part it’s not what we would call a trouble spot—or line, more precisely.  It is, however, still very much a border, and my family had the pleasure of crossing over it last week, on our way to and from a visit to Montreal. Since my mother, gone now almost 10 years, grew up in a house right on the main street of Stanstead, the first town you come to after entering Canada, this is always an emotionally meaningful journey for me.  When I look at this house (her grandparents’ home, where her mother moved her five children after losing her husband) I try to imagine my mother as a girl skipping around, with bows in her red hair, greeting the minister who arrives for Sunday lunch; or listening to my grandmother read Dickens to all five children in the evenings, saying, “Now just try to get as much out of it as you can.”  When I do this really vividly, I’m on the borderline all right— not sure whether I’m here or there, Canadian or American, girl or adult.

We didn’t take pictures by the customs station this time around, but we do have one from a previous visit, just about 15 years ago. I don’t exactly look stylish, it’s true, but I’m rich with offspring.

Just for comparison’s sake, here’s a really nice shot of Madonna, too. I’d like to say that it was taken way before she had kids, but that’s not so— it’s from just a few years ago, 2011.

Oh well. Just because she doesn’t necessarily want to turn into me to start her 2015, I can still take stock of my own way of life, recognize that my kids are now taking care of themselves for the most part, maybe arrange to meet her on the borderline somewhere, and we’ll just see what develops.