A friend of mine recently asked on Facebook, “What’s the longest you’ve ever had a song stuck in your head?”

Sister, my brain has been leasing out space to Baby Beluga for nearly a quarter century, ever since my now 27-year-old fell in love with it and wanted to hear it several times every day, often insisting we both sing along. The song isn’t there non-stop, but it has consistently popped in to say hello at least once a week for all these years. Raffi has some catchy tunes, I’ll give him that. At this point, I assume that if I reach a stage in aging where my memory loses information like my own address or the names of my children, I’ll still have a “little white whale on the go” to think about.

Also, I read the book Madeline aloud so many times that I can to this day recite *several pages* of it from memory. I could really use that headspace for things like staying current with technology changes or keeping track of my to-do list, but nope — “an old house in Paris covered in vines” it is. And let’s not even get into “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike these songs and stories. In fact, I adore Madeline. But I don’t know what use they are to me now, echoing around in my mind, so irrelevant to my current life. Unless…I could analyze them to figure what I can do in my own writing to make it so memorable? Or… if I become a grandmother some day?

Mostly, I take it as a sign that my brain has a mind of its own that’s not entirely within my control, and that it was shaped in some permanent way by the experience of motherhood. Thoughts come and go as they want. You might even say “Waves roll in and the waves roll out.” Maybe I shouldn’t overanalyze and just accept it as the rhythm of my internal life. After all, there are worse things that could be going on in my head…

“You are the dancing queen.”

Oh lord.

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