It shouldn't make me want to bust, but it does.

I got a phone call at dinner tonight from a neighbor a couple of blocks over, Charley. He sounded a bit nervous, and I wasn't expecting anything good.

He said he feels bad, because this all started out so innocently. Uh-oh, I thought, here we go.

Charley said he had started to do some yard work earlier, and asked a girl on his block if she knew of any neighborhood boys who might like to earn a few bucks doing some yard work. She said she would ask, and left. She came back a bit later, with Katie. They began working, and he left for a doctor's appointment. Charley has leukemia, Sean told me this later. Meanwhile, Sean and a few friends from our block went looking for the girls, and when they found them they too set to work. Charley came home, and was insistent they take some money. He gave them fifty dollars, and said he would have given them one hundred, but he only had fifty.

Yep, they did the right thing. They went to a friend's house, made a card, they all signed it, and they gave it to him, with the $50 bill enclosed. They told him there is no way they were going to take his money.

We teach them to be charitable, we preach it, we expect it from them. Yet somehow, when they do the right thing, the thing we expect, sometimes it just feels like a little miracle. I know Charley thinks so too.

I am having one of my proudest moments as a parent right now. The truly charitable thing to do would be to not brag on my kids for doing what they should do, after all, they never said a word about it. But it is obvious I am not the better person. I am proud, and I want everyone to know it.