That the cold water trick was something that always amazed me.

As children, our first impulse was to turn on the hot water, but my mother would always warn us that we could get burnt before we even realized it if our hands were still numb. It amazed me at first because I didn’t understand the logic behind how it felt so warm.

To this day, I remember that sense of mystery every time I run my hands under the cold water after coming in from the cold.

Even before that, Elizabeth was never entirely stable. She was always whispering to my mom that she was adopted and that one day “her French mama was going to come back for her.” But that was the day where she left hold of reality once and for all.