I conducted my house hunt in secret. I did not want anyone telling me that I was being hasty or foolish or any of the other obvious things. One day I found myself gazing through the front window of a converted carriage house onto a leafy cul-de-sac. A girl with braids and a Dodgers hat was standing on a chalk outline of home base, and I was certain that I was seeing a future version of Sam, who would play stickball on this street as if she owned it. In that moment, something that once seemed vague and uncertain gained a definite, pleasing shape.

We had been living together only a few months when Sam started calling me Daddy. She was nearly two. I was the man who was living with her mother, the man who was putting her to bed at night and giving her a bath. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to correct.

42. Packing crates on Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, 1956

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, AUGUST 1956: Ken brags that I’m a pioneer, but desperate is more like it! It’s impossible to ride the subway with a stroller. Even if I could somehow manage it, too much time would be lost. After an hour of being strapped in, Sam demands her freedom, and traveling with her to my old haunts would use up half of those precious sixty minutes. Anyway, the biggest question these days is not so much what to photograph but how. Sam is generally accommodating, but of course she’s more sensitive to the weather than I am. There are days when, no matter what the weather, she’s simply not in the mood.

Enduring two of those days in a row can be difficult. My love for Sam grows daily—a fact that continues to amaze me, since it’s already deeper and stronger than anything I’ve ever known. But if I’m being honest, there are occasions when I do not like her. And these occasions—for instance, when the weather’s fine but Sam starts kicking and crying and arching her back when we haven’t even been out thirty minutes—inevitably lead to many, many moments when I do not like myself. When I see other mothers strolling the Promenade with their prams or sitting on park benches, happy to spend their days dandling their children on their knees, discussing whether it’s better to let Baby “cry it out” or to ignore the advice of Dr. Spock—then I’m certain there is something wrong with me.