Lavishly, thoughtlessly, and in exactly the currency that let me keep my eyes on my own life.

My mother saw straight through it, of course.

She always said save it for the baby, and I heard modesty, when what she was really telling me, as clearly as she knew how, was that she did not want my money.

She wanted her daughter.

She was, in her gentle way, trying to hand the gifts back and ask for the only thing she had ever wanted, and I kept mistaking the return of my money for humility, and buying her more creams.

She never needed a single thing I bought her.