Bad at giving gifts, or so I tell people. It's one of those character traits that has nothing to do with my actual personality; I mean, I'm not naturally gifted at picking out the perfect present for a friend (pun intended) but I'm not impaired at it either. Rhetorically speaking, I could work on finding stronger presents for people and wipe that trait clean from my list of faults. Instead I tend to let it nestle neatly into a small cranny of my identity, where I groom it, and brag about it, and worst of all, use it as an excuse when I continue to buy subpar gifts for people.

Mother's day arrived in an exponential curve of reminders that I ritually ignored. There was passing by the loopy lettering in powder pinks and blues at the dollar section of Target two weeks before. There were "#1 Mother!" champagne flutes that my own mother would find unbearably corny in the little mountain town I visited one week before. There was the time I asked some friends when Mother's Day was. They told me it was this Sunday. There was when I asked a friend what they were doing for Mother's Day and my relief that they seemed to be as unprepared for the holiday as I was. There was a shrug, an "I'll take her out to dinner or something". There was going to the drug store late at night and digging through the Mother's Day cards to find the funniest one, a friend skipping plans because of Mother's Day festivities, a Facebook post, a Twitter ad.

And here I am, with nothing but a card with a bee on it to my name, lying in bed on the night before the big day; bad at gift giving, indeed. Also lazy at it too, and not the most picture-perfect daughter about the whole thing.

My mother is the best gift giver I know. For Christmas I asked for nothing in particular- surprise me- hoping to unwrap some entertainment at the very least in seeing what some of my relatives think I might want. I received some interesting things for sure, but what really surprised me was the array of gifts I got from "Santa". A brush for curly hair, a Hillary t-shirt, a sports bra, a scrunchie, stationary, and a book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. All of these were obviously attuned to my little needs and tiny details of the life I was leading.

There are those gifts she gives me for the big and little holidays, but there are also those gifts she has given me unyieldingly, every single day of my life. Food on my plate every morning, access to a prestigious education, unfailing and unconditional support throughout all of my obsessions and endeavors, years of organized sporting, a good music taste, a hunger for books and fiction, a healthy sense of safety and care for my wellbeing, good manners and quirky mannerisms now imbedded into my personality, as conventional and stable a home as I've ever witnessed, and a love that is expressed, reinforced, assured, spoken, shown, and above anything else, constant. She also gave me the gift of life and stuff too, which continues to be pretty neat.

So how does a self-proclaimed bad-gift-giver even try to tackle the monumental task of getting a present for someone who gave you, well, everything?

What it could boil down to is that there's no real way to rise to that challenge, so when I walked past those Mother's Day displays I could intrinsically tell that no gimmicky gift would do squat to abate the enormous tide of gratitude I feel for this woman.

But beyond that, I am swayed by one of the most important lessons my mom has given me. I think to her giggling at my dad as he talks to a pretty lady next to him on the airplane. I think of her tireless work at her job, and when, on her birthday people fall all over themselves to thank her for everything she does. My dad cooks an extravagant brunch, my grandparents shower her in florals, and her Facebook is boiling over the top with notifications of people trying to share their love. I think of her response to my question to her the day before Mother's Day.

"Do you want a present?"

"No, I have everything I want."

One of the many, many lessons my mother has taught me, is that it's important to let other people show their love in their own ways. I learn that from the way she's stopped me from lecturing my brother and told me to wait for the times he does things that really are sweet. I learn that from the way she trusts my father. I learn that from the way she gives to others, and holds family dinners, and loves us in the way she knows how to.

So I, poor-gift-giver-extraordinaire, wish not to compensate with trite gimmicks. For every gift my mom has given me, I wish to return in the way I know how. By becoming the best person I can be, by creating, by succeeding, by handling my failures with grace, by being thankful, by giving back, and, most importantly, by doing all of these things for her.

Mother, everything I am is because everything you've given me.

This might be an excuse for not giving you an actual, real-life gift, but I'm starting to think that the point of this whole motherhood thing is the fundamental thanklessness of it. I think that someday I'd like to give it a try, but I'm afraid because you make it look so easy.