Somewhere in Phoenix, baby birds are hatching in nests made of a little girl's kindness.
They are spending their first days nestled among her silky, light brown tresses.
The curls came from Kate Mcrae, just turned 7. And as you read this, she's either going into or preparing for surgery to remove a second devastating brain tumor.
Cancer has dominated much of her life — and that of her mother Holly, father Aaron, and siblings Olivia and Will — since she was just 5.
But on a very early spring day, as clumps of hair were falling out because of toxic treatments and the family talked of shaving her head yet again, she said she wanted to do what her pal Daisy had done.
So they gathered the little girl's hair strands and deposited them on the front porch so neighborhood birds could steal the hair to build homes for their babies. Lucky little birds.
I don't know Kate. My husband has "met" the Mcraes in the online blog communities that seem to spring up between families experiencing terrible illness. The number of such families is nothing short of astounding. It's easy to forget that unless you know someone who is battling a disease.
And it really does seem worse when the warrior is a child.
Kate has what is called a supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumor. The first sign the family's world was changing was a slight tremor in her hand. Worried, her mom made a doctor's appointment. Nothing prepared her for the diagnosis.
Kate has lived through chemotherapy and surgery, a stem cell transplant and radiation. Her family spent weeks at the Phoenix hospital and even relocated to Texas for a couple of months so Kate could undergo proton beam radiation treatments.
Now they're back in the hospital again as she fights a new round of brain tumor. The treatment brings risks, as well. The human skull is a wonderfully compact place, with eyes and optic nerves and different sections of the brain and spinal column all confined in a very tight space. What kills a tumor can endanger something else.
But as her hair fell under the trimmer's blade, Kate Mcrae was thinking about the baby birds.
You don't have to go to Phoenix to find stories of children as brave and embattled as Kate. Such kids fight for life at children's hospitals all over the country, including up the hill at Primary Children's Medical Center.
And you don't even have to know one of them to be inspired by the endurance and resilience and to some degree stoicism the kids and their families display.
I am not part of Kate Mcrae's cancer journey. I just read about it at Prayforkate.com. But she has become part of my own travels. So has Trevor, a Utah teen who recently suffered an aneurysm and Steven who beat leukemia as a child and now counsels grief-stricken parents and children as they cope with loss.
We are all a conglomeration of the stories that make us cry and the people we find inspiring and those we watch as they help and hope. And while I can't cure Kate's cancer, knowing her story reminds me I'm not powerless to bless someone.
My friend Lori makes prayer quilts. When I had surgery recently, Wendy brought a weekly meal as I healed. Holly and Aaron fret not just about Kate, but about the other children fighting their own illnesses at the children's hospital.
As surely as Kate's hair met a bird's need, I can be part of someone's solution by giving blood, by cooking, by praying, by donating.
Participating in life is as simple as showing up.
Deseret News staff writer Lois M. Collins may be reached by e-mail at lois@desnews.com. Follow her on Twitter at loisco.