Mom took my cold hand in her palm and started rubbing it. “You’re so cold,” she said. “I just came in from outside,” I told her. I expected her to start singing a line from La Boheme about how “your tiny hand is frozen,” but instead, with our fingers lying next to each other, she counted them as if together they were one hand. “You’re my bubaleh,” she whispered. I wanted her back so much in that moment. In truth, and in retrospect, 2018 has been our hardest year yet in dealin