Mom's Jewel

From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Mom

By Ferida Wolff

The most precious jewels are not made of stone, but of flesh.
~Robert Ludlum

When I was a little girl, I loved to look through my mother's jewelry box whenever my parents went out for the night. There were glittering treasures hidden inside, like the gems in a pirate's chest. I would try on each piece of Mom's jewelry and create a story to go with it. A rhinestone-studded pin in the shape of a crown seemed to give me a queen's permission to indulge my imagination. Slithery golden chains wrapped themselves like snakes around my arms so I could pretend to be Cleopatra. Mom had more rings than I had fingers and I wore each one in turn, assigning them individual magical powers that I could activate with a mere touch. There were earrings galore; some dangled halfway down my neck and swayed as I became an Egyptian dancer, while those with tiny pearls rested delicately on my earlobes, making me royalty for the evening.

What I loved best of all, though, was a bracelet with milky stones that my mother called moonstones. If I was lucky, and my mother wore something else that night, I could have the bracelet for myself until I went to bed. I would pretend that I reached into the sky and captured the moon's light, which I tucked carefully into each stone. Then I would hold the bracelet up to the window to compare it to the moon. The moon was always bigger but the stones were brighter. They seemed to glow more brilliantly as the moon got larger until, at full moon, they were so beautiful I had to hold my breath in wonder. One day, when I was grown up, I decided, I would wear the moon on my wrist whenever I wanted, even during the day. And I would be an elegant lady. At that time, the most elegant lady I could think of was my mother.