Nine Reasons Why Children Will Always Be Enthralled By Such Comfort Books as Mommy Mine

1. The mother tiger might get trapped and killed by unarmed villagers in Bangladesh.

2. The mother kangaroo might get shot in the outback, slaughtered on site, and sold for meat at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne.

3. The mother pig might get sold to Stephen O’Mara at the Donnelly’s Bacon Factory on Cork Street, in Dublin.

4. The mother rhinoceros might get poached in Namibia, her body discarded in the semi-arid savannah, and her two horns sold to a Yemeni collector for $50,000.

5. The mother alligator might get swallowed alive in the Everglades by a non-native python somebody let loose from their garage in Miami or Miramar, and once swallowed, the mother might fight, and neither alligator nor python will likely survive.

6. The mother parrot might get pilfered, put on a plane, and kept caged in the basement of some Canadian periodontist.

7. The mother mouse might swallow poison meant for this weed or that.

8. The mother elephant might run afoul of a pack of hyenas after catching a cold, weakening, slowing by a step or two, lone-adulting that baby.

9. The child’s mother might slip on a wet floor, crack her head open, and die. The child’s mother might eat too much fast food, harden her arteries, and die. The child’s mother might marry the wrong man, call him the wrong name at breakfast, take a knife to the chest, and die. The child’s mother might run away and never come back. The child’s mother might drive her Dodge Intrepid into a utility pole at ninety miles per hour. The child’s mother might steal a diamond necklace from the mall, get caught, go to jail and stay gone for seventeen years. The child’s mother might cook up methamphetamines on the kitchen stove, burn the house down, burn her skin off, live seven hours in the burn unit before saying the hell with it, closing her eyes, and dying. The child’s mother might get her head caught between two swinging baseball bats. The child’s mother might decide she loves all children but her own. The child’s mother might move to Las Vegas, take off her clothes for money, take the elevator to the roof of the casino, swan dive to the street. Look at her in flight, that tragedy, that beauty, mommy mine.