Baking

Having searched in vain the other day to find a recent photograph of myself, I realized that no one takes pictures of me anymore, not since I had kids. That's an exaggeration, there are pictures of me of course. There are pictures of me nursing and rocking a newborn to sleep. There are pictures of me holding a baby by her fingertips while she takes a few tentative steps. And there are tons of me holding this kid or that kid in my arms. But there aren't many pictures of just me. That's a pretty good metaphor for how motherhood has changed me. My life is not just about me anymore, my kids are always in the picture.

Take, for example, a photo my husband took a couple of Christmases ago. I'm in the kitchen baking a chocolate cake with my kids. (That's another way motherhood has changed me, I bake more.) My husband likes to take candid shots of us. Mostly they don't quite turn out. Someone—usually my son—moves too much and the photo comes out blurry. But sometimes, as here, everything clicks. The shot is taken through the cutaway between the kitchen and the dining room, so I have to bend down to appear in the frame. We are all leaning in towards each other and our faces occupy the top half of the frame. My son and I are looking right into the camera, my daughter is looking into the bowl. Frances has a gleeful look on her face and a bit of cake batter smudged on her lip. Isaac has a finger poised over the bowl. I am wearing no make-up, and a self-conscious smile that says, "you had to take a picture when I had no make up?" But that's okay, my eyes look a bit tired but I look happy.

What I love about this photo is how well it captures us as a family. Although it was holiday season, there are no signs of the holidays. But baking is one of those things that makes even ordinary days festive, that may be why I like to do it. It is one of life's quotidian pleasures. I don't think my father ever took a picture of my mom and I baking together, but some of my happiest memories are of doing just that, of me and my mother in the kitchen making cookies, and of sneaking a taste of cookie dough past her. And that too is part of what I cherish about this picture, for there I am standing in my mother's kitchen, standing in her place now, the palimpsest of past and present.