Selfish...

Today my car's odometer hit 100,000 miles. Not a big deal, right? Well that's the case with most people, but not to me. It's one of my many, many quirky little hang-ups that I have. This one, though, I actually know the route-cause.

I grew up in a house with 6 other children. My mother and step-father were hard-working, but uneducated and unskilled. Growing-up, I had and witnessed many Americanized "struggles" due to the American form of poverty which definitely left an imprint on my personality and way of thinking.

One of the things that really struck home was my parents struggle with transportation. There were many times when my step-father would walk (and hitchhike) 30 miles to work because another car, in long line of dilapidated predecessors, had broken down. He did this with much pride and without complaint. He did this despite the fact that he had just worked all night at the bakery around the corner from our house. He did this even though when the weekend rolled around the 7 ungrateful children he loved so deeply would just harass him about the things they did not possess.

There were many other instances of shame with parents vehicles that I remember. I remember being 6 years-old and riding to my aunts house with my mother in our little yellow hatch-back something-or-other. The latch on the hood broke which flew up blocking our view as we were cruising down a busy road, so of course, my mother brought the car to a screeching halt. This attracted a lot of attention. My mother got me out of the car and made sure I was safe on the side walk, then asked "Are you okay? scared?" Do you know what my asshole, selfish reply was? "I'm embarrassed."
I actually remember the expression on my mother's face when I said that. It makes me want to vomit.
When I was in high school, my parents were very happy because they had gotten a great bargain on a great-running full-sized car of some sort. The car was between 10 and 15 years old when they obtained it, so the previously red exterior paint was much faded. Of course, my wide-shut teenage eyes only saw the pink exterior and was horrified. The entire time (several years) my parents owned the car, I rode with my head ducked to avoid being spotted by my friends.
The one funny memory I have is from middle school. Madonna had just released the song "justify my love" and the DJ on the local radio station was raving about how the song was in full surround sound. We were in another in the line of my parents clunker cars and although this one actually had a working radio, we only had one working (crackling) speaker. So, of course, the traffic chick at the radio station interrupts the DJ to say something along the lines of how much it must suck for the guy riding around with only one working speaker. When I ruminate on that now, I think she may have grown up in similar circumstances or was possibly living them at the time of her comment.

All of this now influences my current wants and supposed needs. That 100,000 miles on my odometer screams at me in my affected brain. It says that I am in great need of a new (or newer) vehicle. I have been thinking about it for a couple of months. I have gone on many car web-sites and designed my cute little economical fuel efficient new love many times over. I am constantly checking out other's beautiful little Aveo's, Fit's, Mini's, & Yaris's, each one admired for it's cuteness and fuel efficiency. Many readers might think, 'just buy one, they're not that expensive'....

But...

There are eyes that haunt me. Beautiful Ethiopian eyes. Eyes that show a soul that have lost everything but one little glimmer of hope; hope of a family, hope of a future. Those same eyes and soul are well aware of their owner's age. They are aware of the owner's slim likelihood to be adopted... yet, the glimmer of hope is still there.
I fell in love with that shiny little smidgen of hope during my short meeting with the owner of those eyes. And I know that if I give in to my affected wants of a new car that it makes it much less possible for D and I to make that wonderful little girl a part of our family. It's not something that we have fully contemplated. It's not something that we have even completely investigated. There are questions that are unanswered that may make things more difficult or by some slim possibility easier...
Is she really twelve? Does that really matter? Would she actually want to be part of our family? Can D and I raise a kid that was born while we were still in our teens? How will adopting outside the birth-order affect all of our children? How will we come up with all of the funding? How impossibly difficult will it be to remove that sweet girl from her environment? her culture? her country? everything that she has ever known, loved, and possibly thought about?
These are questions that I don't know how to answer right now, but blogging about them does make my resolve stronger to quit admiring those little cars and just be happy with mine.
(not my actual car, but same model & color)