"Wouldn't it be something," Caleb says over dinner, "if my birthday was every day?"

"It'll feel like it soon enough," I grumble.

"Well," says his mother in her exquisitely motherly way, "having your birthday once a year is what makes it so special."

Caleb chews on his salad and thinks about this. "If I only had to make my bed once a year, it still wouldn't be fun, because it's a chore."

"I was wondering if he'd figure that out," the wife mutters to me.

Like Caleb, I also began immediately to poke for holes in the wife's logic. "What if," I ask her, "it's not the case that having birthdays once a year makes them special? Maybe you have the causality reversed. What if we only get them once a year because they are special?"

"You have a very cynical view of God," she replies, shaking her head.

Somebody has to ask these questions, you know. Apparently it's up to me and Caleb.