My eight-year-old skipped lunch for six weeks to buy a red dress for the little girl across the street. The next morning our lawn was covered with fifty lunchboxes — and taped to the biggest one, a beat-up metal thing sitting alone in the middle of the grass, was a note that said OPEN THIS ONE FIRST.

I also told him — that night, and again the next week, and about four more times over the following year — that he was never, ever allowed to go hungry for somebody else again. That there is no version of kindness that runs on an eight-year-old skipping meals. That he could have told me and I would have driven him to the store myself.

He cried. I cried. We made a rule about it, out loud, and he has kept it.

Both things are true: it was the kindest thing I have ever watched a person do, and it was six weeks of a growing child not eating, and I am not going to sand either edge off.

The way it came out, for the record, was that I asked him where the money came from.

He'd had eleven dollars from leaves. The dress was thirty-four with tax. So I sat on the kitchen floor with a boy holding a shopping bag and I did the arithmetic out loud in front of him, and I watched him decide, in real time, not to lie to me a second time.