It is nearly midnight; 11:32 pm to be precise. We are on our way to the beautiful beaches of sunny Florida. Chandler has spent the majority of this trip sitting with Josiah, helping him, feeding him and letting him snuggle up next to her. She is so sweet with him.

I just took a break from driving and we all swapped seats.  Rick took over at the wheel, I crawled in back to sit with Josiah for a bit.  It’s only been 8 hours since we left home, but Josiah has done really great so far.  He absolutely loves riding in the van. He proved it on our first road trip of the summer.  Last month we drove from Texas to Pennsylvania, then to Ohio, then back to Texas. 

That was one very long trip with many, very long hours in the van.  Josiah was a trooper. Given that nothing about the experience was routine, I was quite surprised.  I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but I anticipated some frustration.  I expected maybe a melt down or two.  I was ready for some type of confrontation. Nothing about Josiah’s routine was normal.  He was in unfamiliar territory.  He was surrounded by unfamiliar people.  He had an unfamiliar schedule.  Yet, he breezed right through it all.

A few hours into that trip, I looked up to take notice of what everyone was doing.  Chandler was in the front, together with Rick, singing silly songs, Jesse was engrossed in a computer magazine and Josiah, sitting in the back, was simply staring. He had discovered the speaker panel closest to him and was mesmerized.  He stared at it for hours.

At one point, I moved back near him and looked intently at it myself.  I wanted to see what he saw.  I wanted to understand what it was that captivated his attention for so long. I can’t say I’ll ever know, for sure.  From my perspective, nothing about it was intriguing. There was nothing sticking out of it or around it or near it to draw attention to it.  There was nothing shiny about it to make it visually appealing.  There was no sound emanating from within.