Do you stop to smell the roses?

As I rode home yesterday in the front passenger seat of my husbands truck on what was to me a short six hour drive. The rain had stopped and the sun was setting, peaking through the clouds here and there. "Look mom, at the hole in the clouds", my six year old son said from the back seat. Yeah, those are the sun's rays shinning down and it's called a sun beam. I replied and went on to say that it looked like a spaceship was just about to land. We found clouds that looked like puppies and other shapes. Then he took a nap. When he awoke, "Mom, mom, there's a bean!". A what? I asked confused. "A bean, a sun bean!"he said with with such excitement it also excited me! Not only had he payed attention to what I had told him earlier but was just as excited to find one again an hour or so later. While my other children would have been bored beyond belief, my youngest sat with his face plastered to the window the whole time he was awake pointing things out and asking questions. Me being the amateur photograper that I am, I opted to leave my camera at home this trip. What a bummer! Then I remembered... I can take a picture with my cell phone. I took it out, turned it on and clicked the camera button. I tried and tried to get a shot of the beautiful sun setting and the most awesome sunbeam I had ever witnessed but was unable to get a clear shot through the millions of trees that line all the southern highways especially with my husband driving 85 miles per hour. Why is he in such a rush I wondered. But that didn't stop me from trying. 1 no good, 2 no good either, neither were 3, 4, 5, or 6. My son's excitement of the beautiful scene God had put before us kept me from giving up. Then finally, I got it! "Let me see, mom, let me see!, Oooowww! That's pretty." As I sat back and prepared to turn off my phone. There's a rainbow, my husband commented in his nonchalant tone void of the least bit of excitement My son and I shared. Take a picture mom." I did of course and again he wanted to see if I had indeed got the shot. As I sat back satisfied with the photos I had taken, it hit me... Did my husband see the sunbeam or the half dozen or so lakes we had passed? This wasn't his first trip from North Carolina to Georgia but has he ever admired the scenery? Why didn't he pull of the road and stop the truck for us to get a better view and the perfect shot? I can and have driven across country, West to east and east to west and each time I see something new. Something I'd never noticed before, perhaps it wasn't there. I always pay attention. The beetles that cross 11th Street on the outskirts of Tracy, California in the fall. The field of flowers in varying colors or tumbleweed taller than any person I've ever known, just west of Bakersfield. Was the sunbeam so incredible to me because I witnessed it with my son? Or would it have been just as remarkable having witnessed it alone? I guess I'll never know and I don't think I care because the memory that I have of being the one to view and truly see the sunbeam my baby saw and share in his excitement is enough, until the next time.