I’m tired and hungry practically all the time, but I don’t mind because those feelings are connected to you. Without that book from Renaldo, I doubt I could have faced down all the scowling nurses telling me over and over that formula was best during the first bleary days in the hospital when I kept refusing their bottles even though you were hungry, and I was sore, and neither of us knew what we were doing. But now, feeding you is the most soothed I’ve ever felt, a sense of completeness unlike anything else.

Since you’re already six weeks old and the library show has come and gone, it’s back to the bookstore. I know I should feel grateful to John for saving my place at Barrow Street, and to Deb for taking such good care of me. Most days I do, but there are also days when I don’t see how I can keep going. It was silly to expect so much from a few photographs on a library wall, but still I had been hoping for . . . what? Greater recognition? Strength, I suppose. Something more to sustain me as I continue the work. Instead the Little Gallery show has faded to a distant memory, while you remain very real.

Even though you and photography are practically impossible to reconcile, I can’t fathom a world without you both. Some mornings I’m so heavy with dread I can hardly move, but other days like today it’s grand to walk west with you through Washington Square. In some ways, a mother with an infant is even more invisible than a woman alone. If anything, people notice the pram that she’s pushing and not the camera in her hand.

DEBORAH BRODSKY: Faces was the biggest photography show I’d ever seen—that anyone had seen, really. It took up an entire floor of the museum, with each room dedicated to a different theme, and as I was walking through it, I could see people reckoning with photography in a new way. To go there with Lilly was a trip because of the way she looked at everything. I could tell she was there not just to enjoy the show but to size it up. As far as she was concerned, this was her competition.