Kindness is the one gift that should always be regifted. It’s a gift no one would ever be offended to receive knowing it had first belonged to someone else. And it’s a gift that once made, the giver would undoubtedly only be pleased if you passed it along to someone else.

I gave a talk on Friday — 90 or so people in the audience — and spoke at one point about the extraordinary generosity of my Reality Chick, Reality Online, and Sense and the City readers who, over the years, have contributed thousands and thousands of dollars during my annual fundraising drives for All Faiths Food Bank. I told the audience that my fee for the day’s talk was going straight to All Faiths, since every year I donate whatever I earn during the month of November from speaking and newspaper writing fees to All Faiths. (If you’d like to participate in this year’s drive or just learn more, click here.) I spoke about kindness and caring for everyone in our community — about the incredible need many are facing and I related times in my life, too, when I’d been in need and strangers had stepped up to help me.

After my talk, as I was preparing to leave, a woman approached me and pressed a check into my hands. “Your talk today moved me,” she said; and she asked me to make sure to send along her check, which she had just written, with mine when I send it in to All Faiths.

Such an unexpected kindness. Such an appreciated gesture. And her contribution will make a tangible difference to several someones in the upcoming weeks in our community. That’s the perfect regifting scenario: the group was kind enough to hire and pay me to speak; I was kind enough to earmark the fee for All Faiths; a stranger in the audience was kind enough to amplify those kindnesses with her own donation. Who know where this one small strand of kindness — begun when this group was kind enough to invite a column-less columnist to speak — will end?