What makes the world go round?

My father and my son, Big N, love hanging out together and spend all their time talking. Neither my husband nor I can figure out what they find to talk to each other about or how they can sustain each other's attention, patience and interest for as long as they do, but from the sporadic reports we get from each of them, at least two things are obvious: one, they cover a wide range of topics; two, Big N feeds off of my father's immense store of general knowledge and my father revels in Big N's energy and natural curiosity.

On one of his recent visits, my father taught Big N a lullaby that I grew up listening to. It's simple and lovely, but the meaning is profound. It asks (in loose translation),

Who makes the sun come up?
Who makes the moon turn?
What are those that our eyes see twinkling in the dark sky?
If you think about all these things, you realize there is something [bigger, more powerful than us]

Over the past few years, whenever I've remembered the lullaby, my mind has immediately recalled that heartbreaking Bee Gees song, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," and that one particular line in it, "What makes the world go around?" Even the tunes of the two songs, with their plaintive strains, are very similar.

After two days of falling asleep to the lullaby, one evening Big N sat down at his piano and plucked out the song on the keys. I was puttering around in kitchen preparing dinner and my father was busy with the newspaper and Little N. My father, who is generally happy that Big N can play the piano but has no clue about any of the songs he plays (they're all Western folk and classical songs), burst into applause when he heard it. That he was thrilled does not even begin to describe his reaction on hearing one of his favorite songs played on the piano.

We immediately called my aunt who sang this song to her siblings (my father being the youngest of the lot) when they were growing up. She has never seen Big N and Big N has not really spoken to her much on the phone given the language gap.

But there we were that evening, Big N excitedly telling his grand-aunt on the phone what he had done and was about to do again for her, my father and I taking turns to translate each of them for the other, Big N playing the lullaby on the piano, me holding the phone close to the keys, each of us trying to grab the phone to find out first hand what my aunt's reaction was, my aunt listening to the song over the phone and saying she couldn't believe what she had just heard (and I imagine, shaking her head), that she couldn't believe that Big N actually liked the song, her wanting to find out how it had all happened, and her declaring, "After all, he's my grandson, right?"

When we had finally hung up the phone, Big N said that was the happiest day of his life, my father had a big grin on his face, my aunt also probably had an equally big grin on her face many miles away, and I was just happy looking at the delight on the two faces on either side of me.

What makes the world go round? This comes mighty close to it.