As a columnist for a local newsletter, I am always looking for good stories to share related to kindness. Most of these stories I read about in other papers or hear of from friends and family, but on one ocassion I experienced an of kindness that like no other.

I was attending a coffeehouse last year at the request of my friend Richard who had organized an event to showcase amateur talent. I was doing some pre-show socializing when I glimpsed a woman I that knew in the distance. "Oh my god," I thought, "She’s had cancer and lost all her hair from the chemotherapy." The woman’s scalp sported a quarter inch of stubble; she was virtually bald.

A friend of mine rushed over to me and grabbed my arm, pulling me off to the side of the room. "I’ve found a kindness story for your column! It’s Margaret over there. She shaved off her hair to give it to kids who've lost their own hair. Can you believe it? I don’t think I would be able to do that!"

I stood there dumbfounded. Here I was preaching to others about kindness and I knew I would never shave my own curls and give them away to bald children. My female vanity would never allow it. I stared at the hairless woman across the room with an overwhelming feeling of humility and awe.

Later in the evening, I had the opportunity to speak with Margaret about her decision to give away her hair. She’d been watching television and had seen a documentary about children who had lost their hair to disease. An organization was seeking donations of human hair of at least six inches in length to make wigs for bald children for Christmas. Empathetic to the children’s situation, Margaret persuaded her husband to help her shave off her own hair as a donation. It would be her most meaningful gift that year.

I ran into Margaret a few months later. Her hair had grown back; no one would have known she’d been bald last year ... except for a couple of fortunate children now coifed with sandy-blond hair as a result of her extraordinary kindness.