There’s one thing nobody tells you about breastfeeding, and it is this: it gives you a lot of time to think. No matter how proficient you become at writing texts, one-handed, or playing jigsaw puzzles on your phone, you will inevitably end up staring, blankly, into space, ruminating upon the strange familiarity of the whole thing.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how precious these moments are, and how fleeting they’ll be in the grand scheme of things. Before I know it, Atlas will be at school; then he’ll be driving; eventually, he’ll be all grown up and moved out.
(I’m getting to the Buffy part, I swear.)
It’s made me think about memory, and how very one-sided it is. Sure, we each have our own version of events, informed by our memories and then altered, slightly, by each subsequent recollection of them – but I’ve realised that these moments are unusual in that, though they involve two of us, only one of us will truly remember them.
I look down at him and I feel acutely how unfair it is that he will not remember all of this time I spent holding him, feeding him, loving him so actively, so obviously.
I have started to think, too, of the time my mother spent holding me, feeding me, loving me so actively and so obviously – although, honestly, I think she was probably more comfortable leaving me to cry in my crib than I am with Atlas – and how unfair it is that I do not, cannot, remember it. If a tree falls in the woods etc…
There’s an episode of Angel, '‘I Will Remember You’, in which Buffy storms into the offices of Angel Investigations (lol), irate at having discovered that Angel was lurking around Sunnydale while she and her friends were being accosted by the ghost of the Chumash Indians (yes, really) and didn’t tell her that he was there.
While visiting, they are attacked by a Mohra demon – in the fisticuffs that ensue, the demon’s blood mingles with Angel’s, and he becomes human, for the first time in centuries.
This is significant in the Buffyverse, because the reason Angel and Buffy weren’t together is that Angel is a vampire who has been cursed with a soul, a soul that will be taken from him, should he experience one moment of pleasure. You see where this is going.
In ‘I Will Remember You’, it doesn’t take long for the doomed lovers to realise that Angel’s humanity means they can finally, ahem, express their love, but it similarly doesn’t take long for Angel to cotton on to the fact that his humanity will put Buffy in more danger than ever before, as she fights to keep yet another eejit human alive.
(I swear to God this is the short version…) Angel then goes to some all-powerful forces and asks them to restore his vampire self, which they agree to do, by turning the clock back 24 hours. Inexplicably, this will require that Angel remembers all that has transpired, and Buffy doesn’t.
Even more inexplicably! Angel tells a traumatised Buffy that this is happening, and as the clock begins to wind back they kiss and she tells him she’ll never forget the magical time they’ve spent together…
SPOILER ALERT! She forgets in a major way!
It may be hard to imagine, what with all the talk of humanity and vampires and boinking-related soul-reinstatements, but it’s a true tearjerker of an episode; the idea that Angel is left to remember this moment, alone, is the nail in the coffin (if you’ll excuse the pun) of their mutual heartbreak.
So, you see, I am the Angel in this scenario. Atlas is Buffy. In the relationship between me and my mother, I am Buffy while she is Angel. It’s a cycle that’s doomed to repeat itself, with every generation, each new cycle of reproduction.
There will always be one who remembers – who, even in the moment of experiencing it (I believe, in modern terms, this would segue into a chat about mindfulness and being present but I don’t believe in being present, I believe in worrying about whether or not I’ll remember the moment I’m currently in, or playing on my phone while ignoring the moment I’m currently in), is trying, desperately, to hold on to the memory of that moment, while knowing that the other person will not, cannot do the same.
I suppose it’s the same at the other end. I am midway through the final episode of Amy Schumer’s new Hulu show, Life & Beth (I’d give it a solid three stars; I found the jazz soundtrack in the first few episodes jarring, and I’m not sure it quite hits the marks it aims for), and there is an episode in which Amy’s titular character, Beth, has the same conversation with her father, whose memory is failing.
“How’s your mother?” he asks. Beth has, moments previously, told him about her mother’s death. They have shared a touching moment of sadness and nostalgia.
She takes a beat.
“She’s doing great, Dad.”
I don’t know why this feels quite so wrenching to me, the knowledge that my son will not remember these tender moments we’ve shared, the hours he’s already spent in my arms, as I feed him; in the crook of my elbow, as we sleep; in my lap, as we watch Baby Einstein, even though I know children under the age of 18 months shouldn’t be exposed to screens.
When he’s older, I’ll tell him he didn’t see a television until his third birthday, and that his first taste of refined sugar was at a schoolfriend’s birthday party. I’ll make this memory thing work for me.
Perhaps it is all wrapped up in the human instinct to be remembered. We get some comfort from knowing that the next generations will carry on our legacy, whatever that may be; that the people we touched, in life, will continue to carry us in their hearts, once we are gone. The idea that such memories could be erased, could just slip through one’s fingers, seems somehow grotesque, terrifying.
What is the point of any of it, if no one is there to remember?
I am a tree, falling, over and over again, in the pathless woods. There’s a poem in there somewhere (a pre-existing one, too, I know, but I could write another).
I don’t spend as much time as you might think, gazing sadly at my child. Mostly, I gaze at him happily. I have, I told my husband, smiled at this child more in his six short months than I have smiled, at all, throughout the rest of my life. (I am not a natural smiler.)
But there are moments of sadness, of fear, that come with the inevitable onslaught of time. I try to sit with them (mindfully). I try to see them and feel them and then let them go, so that we can do some more smiling.
There’s always more smiling to do – and even if he doesn’t remember it, later, perhaps by sheer force of will, all of this smiling will cause some irrevocable change in the musculature of my face and, by the time he’s grown up, he’ll say things like, “My mom was always so incredibly smiley.” (MOM is also inevitable, isn’t it.)
So, There's This Crossover Episode of 'Angel' Where Buffy Shows Up in LA…