Waxing Gibbous

"Say again?"

My nine-year-old son was armed with a pencil and notebook.

Outside.
 In the dark.  

He had thrown out a term to me that I had never heard before.

"Waxing Gibbous, Dad.  It's right before a full moon."

It was a wonderful night and the full moon (scratch that)

waxing gibbous was bright and beautiful.

It was superb.

I commented on the moonlight and my son corrected me.

"It's actually sunlight, Dad, reflected off of the moon.

Oh.

He and I sat in the front porch and he studied the moon and wrote down his observations under a string of lit LED Christmas lights.
He informed me that this was his required homework assignment for the next twenty-nine-point-five nights.

There was a crispness to the air and I had just finished a glass of riesling.
I asked him if it was really made of cheese.
He laughed and pretended that his pencil had been violently lodged into his forearm.

It was a moment that I never wanted to end.

But it did.

I sang a line from a song as we went back inside and he inquired about it.

So I downloaded it for him.

And we danced -

in the Waxing Gibbous reflected sunlight.