My 2-year-old runs up to me and crawls into my arms. She holds me tightly and tells me that she loves me. I turn on the TV and my baby disappears. I look around my living room and I can’t find her. Then I hear an awful scream, followed by crying and people speaking in Arabic. She is on the TV! There she is now dead in the middle of the street in Gaza! I panic and I change the channel! There she is again but this time she is in Africa living in a shanty house! A white woman holds up her dirty body and begs the public for help. “Her family died in a fire leaving her all alone. For just 2 cents a day you can save babies just like this.” I change the channel! There she is at 10 getting beat up on the playground at school by a bunch of girls. I change the channel! There she is at 18 and being interviewed by a talk show host. Her clothes are way too tight and she has on way too much make-up. “I slept with over 100 men to pay my rent.” I change the channel! Hey it’s the Lifetime Channel. My daughter is an adult and is now in prison. She is wearing black and orange scrubs, with tear drops tattooed on her face and her hair is braided. Finally I stopped panicking and I started getting angry. I shut the TV off and got out a book instead. Suddenly my toddler reappears in my lap when I turned the first page. “Let’s read about how to poo poo in the potty! Yay!” My greatest fear is something bad happening to my daughter. How do I cope with that fear? I turn off the TV and cherish every precious moment. Just in case something bad happens to her she will need to good memories to help her escape reality. When bad things happen to us its the memories of Mommy reading to us on her lap when we are 2 that comfort us.