I try to get us outside directly after breakfast and back home by early afternoon, because as much as I wish she would, Sam doesn’t nap well in the stroller. And so, each morning I turn on to Court Street and head toward South Brooklyn. Prospect Park is inside the one-hour boundary. I can get as far as Greenwood on the rare day when Sam takes a stroller nap. The farther-flung neighborhoods belong to families who have lived there for generations, but an unfamiliar woman pushing a stroller is never given a sideways look, and if Sam starts to fuss, there is nearly always a neighborhood mother running errands who can point me toward the nearest playground, even if she only speaks Italian. Whether Italian or Irish, Polish or Norwegian, all mothers and children speak sandbox, slide, and seesaw—even, I’ll wager, in California. Perhaps one day we’ll visit you there.

I wish I could borrow your time zone the way I once borrowed your pep pills! Technically, I know your day doesn’t last any longer than mine, but I can’t count the times I’ve looked at my watch and thought longingly of the three hours left in San Francisco, while Brooklyn’s day was that much closer to its end. And so I use the night as well. Thankfully, finding a Brooklyn doctor to write me a prescription was as easy as you said it would be, which gained me the darkroom time to develop a portfolio of new work for Mr. Wythe. For a year I’d been hoping to hear from him, but by the time he called, I’d pushed Aperçu so far from my mind that at first I didn’t recognize his name! I was rather embarrassed, but Mr. Wythe was nice about it, especially after hearing Sam in the background.

KENNETH LOWELL: Lil was happy to subsist on canned beans for days at a time, so I did most of the cooking. Having lived on my own for several years before meeting Lil, I was perfectly capable of making dinner; plus, my salary was decent enough to spring for a maid once a week.