LJWorld.com

I’ve been waging a war lately with my teenage daughter.

Lovely girl that she is, she tends to overuse the word “amazing.”

She’ll insist she had an amazing hamburger for lunch, which she washed down with an amazing milk. After an amazing time at chorale practice, she’ll log on to the amazing Internet and listen to the latest amazing number from amazing Adele.

I try to convince her that words are precious and that she should save such superlatives for actual superlatives, but she’s amazed I’d even question her word choice. Ah, teenagers.

I guess there are worse words she could be bandying about.

That said, I had a rather amazing experience the other morning.

Riding home after another less-than-amazing night on the sports desk, I was spinning up the one semi-significant hill on my usual commute home, lost in my thoughts and the silence of the early morning. I glanced up at the moon — just a day past full — and was stunned to see it encircled by a halo of light.

The halo was thin, but it sported at least a partial — and faint — Roy G. Biv spectrum of G through V, pale green through barely discernible violet. The halo bisected my favorite constellation (doesn’t everyone have one?), Orion, to the east. Just outside the halo to the west, Jupiter blazed away.

It was, in a word, amazing.

Wanting to share the scene with my kids despite the ungodly hour (at least it was a nonschool night), I picked up the pedalling pace. I’ve seen other celestial wonders from the saddle before, but some can be fleeting. I saw the aurora borealis on one ride home, but the gorgeous curtains of light were too faint to see by the time I made it home.

So I pedalled and craned my neck, pedalled and craned, all the while thinking I finally was witnessing my first moonbow.

It’s worth noting here that my son has a thing for moonbows, ever since I describe the phenomenon to him. I think his first three words, in order, were “mama,” “dada,” and “moonbow.” He desperately wants to see a moonbow, despite their rarity. A couple of months ago, we went outside during a full moon and sprayed water from the hose in an attempt to make a synthetic moonbow at his insistence. Reviews of the man-made moonbow were mixed.

As I pedalled home, all I could think was the joy he’d feel when he finally witnessed his beloved first moonbow.

I made it home, rushed inside, quietly crept upstairs and roused the kids, all the while trying (not so successfully) to keep from disturbing the wife.

I led the kids on the back deck and pointed up. Knuckling their eyes, both let out little gasps (maybe it was the cool night air), and drank in the sight. They admired it for a few minutes, then shuffled back off to bed.

Afterward, I learned it was not, in fact, a moonbow but a more-common 22-degree halo.

Whatever the name, it was nonetheless amazing.

And I’m certain I never would have seen it from behind the wheel of my car.