It was a year of increasing independence—for both mother and son. It was the year for connecting it all, making workflow improvements, breathing better. There was eating, sleeping, mailing letters from the post office, discovering Pinterest, learning to write blog posts, and one well-executed major surgery closely followed by the even more life-altering discovery of books by Jonathan Franzen.

The joke is yes, I had a half-cup of cartilege cut out of my head, but what I’m really going to remember when I look back on June 2013 is that it’s when I read The Corrections. Something about claiming life with such directness, something about the it-is-what-it-is-ness of these flawed people not-quite-controlling their lives, it shocked me into such hope and wonder about my own circumstances. Later that summer I also read Freedom, which was even more personal for me and—I searched long for the right phrase—catastrophically reassuring.

All photos were taken in 2013 using mostly the Leica and occasionally the Canon.