“Good goes around and around and around, good goes around and around.”

This I heard in an ad on television for a cereal. It did not do much for me to buy the cereal, but it did get me to thinking. What else could it possibly mean?

I sat in my chair with my oxygen on my face and my cat on my lap and I mulled.

You know, people do good and kind things all the time, from the smallest, sweetest deed to something like, “What a beautiful sweater. The color really becomes you.”

Then there could be something big that someone does for another without thanks or surely without money.

I thought more, searching for examples I knew to be true.

As for the small loving act that I saw with my own eyes, Gene and I were at Mayo Clinic for his cancer check up. We were walking this long hall to see his doctor when we came upon a very elderly couple. They had stopped walking and sat down.

The little, bent lady was crying. The man hovered over her, asking what was the matter. She sniffed daintily and told him, “I forgot to fix my hair and you know, I always want to look nice for the doctor.”

Now, I dare say, many people, hurrying their lady to a doctor appointment, would have brushed this off as silly. But, as I watched, he reached in his back pocket, pulled out a small silver comb and began ever so gently combing her wispy white hair back from her lovely face.

When he finished, he bent, kissed her cheek and whispered, “Now you are so beautiful.” Her tears dried, she smiled a smile of a much-loved woman and they continued their journey up the hall, her day restored.

On the flip side of this good love story, is another. It is about my mother, a woman who always felt other peoples’ feelings — pain or joy. Just weeks before my senior prom, I brought a school friend home to listen to records with me. We started talking about the prom so I showed her my dress.

My mother made me a gorgeous white-dotted Swiss long dress.

My friend Betty looked away and said, “John asked me to go but I can’t. My dad says a long dress is too much money. Anyway, I don’t care.”

That night I told mother what had happened. Her face softened, something I had seen so many times before. I won’t belay this story. Just days before the prom, mother told me to be sure Betty came over after school. When she did, out walked my mother holding the most elegant taffeta, royal blue, long dress she had spent weeks making for Betty.

I cried. Betty cried. But Mother smiled as she slipped it on my friend to make sure it fit.

Betty and John did attend the dance and later became engaged. Actually, the world is filled with selfless deeds, one for another, not asked for, just received.

So, to me, good does go around and around and around.

The view from the mountains is wondrous.

Jean Brody is a passionate animal lover and mother. She previously lived in Winchester, but now resides in Littleton, Colorado. Her column has appeared in the Sun for more than 25 years.