Moments like this…

This morning, 5 a.m. to be exact, I found myself in a rather unusual location.  I was at my dining room table helping my son with his homework. I have to admit that I was frustrated.  I am not a fan of sitting at a table at 5 in the morning when I could be catching up on the last hour of sleep needed before beginning the day.  Yet there I was helping a stubborn SuperBug who’d given up on his homework the night before.

It was easy homework to solve in my opinion.  All he had to do was read and follow the directions, but it wasn’t clicking.  I’d finally allowed him to go to sleep last evening and awake early this AM to try again.  As we sat at the table and my Superbug was slowly getting the concept of the morning’s assignment, I thought to get a visual aid.  I told Superbug I would be right back, went up the stairs, grabbed some dollars and change (math homework) and was coming down the stairs when I saw it. Out the window was the beautiful start to the lunar eclipse.

Photo credit: Huffington Post

The edges of the moon were turning gray and I knew its face would soon be red.  I went downstairs and told Superbug that if he and I finished this particular problem soon, I’d have something neat to show him.  About 6 o’clock, I went back to the stair window and say the eclipse was well underway.  I bid Superbug to get his robe and shoes.  He looked at me with confusion, but did so.  Forty seconds later, we were standing in our driveway looking up at a beautiful lunar eclipse.

“Mommy, the moon is red.  Why?”  I explained to him the science of the Earth’s rotation between sun and moon.  I explained the shadow cast.  I also explained some of the bible verses associated with a red moon.  We had a very fascinating conversation about it.

What I loved the most about the time was, despite the fact that I was up at crack of dawn, my son and I were sharing a private mommy son moment.  He was excited to see something that he would have missed otherwise as he is not required to rise until a few minutes before 7.  The sun would have hidden the night sky by then.

It was a great and wonderful moment.  We stood looking at it for a while and then returned to our dining room table and finished the homework.

I realized that had Superbug finished his homework last night as he was supposed to, he would have missed the eclipse this morning, as would I.  We would have missed that moment of awe together.  It would have been a missed experience.

While I am still not too thrilled that Superbug simply gave up on doing a task, and we are working on that, I must say I’m glad the opportunity was available for us to do something together and capture an amazing memory.  Hopefully, he’ll think the same.

-WinterMommy