“I’m so glad we were able to make this work. So sorry about the mess, by the way. The kids have been going crazy all summer. Maybe I feed them too much sugar.” Nechama touches the back of my elbow, guiding me deeper into the house, chattering away the whole time. “They’re very excited to meet you. My daughter Menuchah especially. She loves taking pictures. I’m sure she’ll want to hear all about your studies at Parker.”
I wonder if Menuchah is like I was, lurking at bus stops and snapping photos of the ladies with baby carriages as they pass by, trying to get the shutter speed just right so that the traffic is a blur behind them. If she wastes her allotted computer time developing new presets in Lightroom and could spend hours in the photography exhibits at MoMA.
Or maybe that’s egotistical of me. Maybe we’re nothing alike at all.
Nechama leads me back into the kitchen, which is large considering this is New York. She even has an island, already laden with dry-goods canisters and a carton of eggs. My mother would be so jealous.
“Have you made challah before?” Nechama asks, so unassumingly I kind of want to die because here it is: my first lie by omission.
“A few times,” I say. “But it’s been years. I don’t remember much.”
I remember some, though. I remember the sensation of warm dough pillowing up between my spread fingers, the way flour clouded the air as my mother dusted it over the countertop. But I don’t remember how many eggs to use or how to form the intricate braids that my mother always accomplished so easily.
I used to imagine my future standing in a kitchen of my own, braiding challah with my small horde of offspring running around underfoot. I can’t admit it to anyone I know now, because they’d think I was bananas, but I still like the idea. Or maybe I just miss the version of myself who craved that future more than anything.
“It’s easy enough once you get the hang of it,” Nechama says, just as an army of children races into the kitchen. There are six of them, all dark haired and barefoot and sharp elbowed. One flings both arms around Nechama’s thighs and she laughs, patting his head. “I had a feeling we wouldn’t make it long without company. This is DovBer, Menuchah, Chaya Mushka, Batsheva Tikvah, Bentzion, and the little one is Yehuda Simcha.”
“Hi,” I say, waving at them, already certain there’s no way in hell I’m gonna remember all those names. Dvora was just as bad as I am. She used to jokingly call every little girl Chaya Mushka and every boy Menachem Mendel. And since pretty much every Chabad family we knew named a kid after the Lubavitcher Rebbe or his wife, odds were that she was at least part right at least 20 percent of the time.
I’ve met a hundred Chaya Mushkas in my life, but hearing the name still makes me flinch.
“Hi,” says one of the girls. “You’re here to take photos of us?”
“Well, not specifically…but, yeah, I’m here to take some pictures—and to braid challah with your ima,” I say. “Are you going to help us?”
She nods fiercely. “I always help Ima make challot. Can I try your camera?”
I’m abruptly very glad I brought both my DSLR and my film camera, because the thought of trying to figure out how to politely inform a ten-year-old that no, they can’t waste my precious film makes me want to punch myself in the nose because it’s so obviously an asshole thing to say. “Sure,” I tell her, and set my camera bag down on the nearest stool to dig out the DSLR and a lens. “You must be Menuchah, right?”
She nods and takes the camera when I pass it to her, turning it on and peering through the viewfinder with the practiced ease of someone who has done it a hundred times before. “Is this the D850?”
“Good eye.”
“I have a D3500,” she says, almost morosely, swiveling the focusing ring and snapping a photo of her mother.
“That’s still a really good camera. Especially for beginners.”
She makes a face and takes another picture, then pulls back to stare down at the screen, examining it. “It’s okay. I’ve had it for like two years, though.”
You’re like ten years old, I want to tell her, but having been ten years old myself once, I know about how well that’d go over.
“Give Ely her camera back, Minni,” Nechama says. “I have no idea how much it would cost to fix that if you broke it, and I don’t want to find out.”
Menuchah hands me the camera reluctantly, and I pack it away again, getting out my SLR instead. It’s a hell of a lot lighter in my grip than the bulky D850 and didn’t cost nearly as much—and thank god for that, because after buying my digital I had to spend the rest of my precious money on developing if I was gonna shoot analog.
And of course I was gonna shoot analog. For all the photos I can take on digital, scrolling through a million shots of the same scene to find the one that’s exactly right, nothing will ever beat the magic of film. Of having to trust yourself to find the perfect shot, the perfect frame, and the perfect focus.
“What is that?” Menuchah asks.
“It’s a range finder,” I say. “For shooting on film.”
Menuchah has that hungry look in her eyes, but I can’t trust a ten-year-old not to use up all my film on art shots of her kitchen island, so this time I don’t hand it to her.
Nechama disperses the children, or at least the male ones. The girls get to stay, to become part of this tradition that is supposed to carry them into their adult lives as wives and mothers. I find myself thinking about that second universe again, the one where I’m in Nechama’s position, baking challah with my daughters. I wonder who this fantasy version of me would have married. Where I would have met him—because it would, of course, be a him.
That version of me might still shoot photos, but only as a hobby. If she had a career, it would have to be something that paid more consistently, especially if she’d married a scholar whose time was to be spent reading Torah instead of toiling behind a counter somewhere.
Nechama assembles the ingredients we need and I draw back, making room for her daughters to join her at the counter, some of them kneeling on chairs to reach. I do my best to be discreet with my photos—especially with film, I don’t want to waste any shots on a scene that is too overtly influenced by my presence. Things can change when people know they’re being observed—something I luckily learned early while I was shooting exclusively on digital. I have had to throw out far too many shots of rictus smiles and taut shoulders.
Maybe it’s the children’s presence, but Nechama doesn’t seem afflicted by the same problem. When I take a photo of her hands—just her hands, deftly weaving together the long strands of challah dough—I can almost imagine they belong to my mother. I can almost be there, all those years ago, standing at our own kitchen counter and weaving my own small loaf.