Mood stone
published: 2010-05-03A mood ring. We noticed it in a local shop here, in this beach village I’m at with my son and niece. It had little butterflies on it. My niece immediately fell for it, even though it was too big.
“A mood ring?” she asked. I explained – “it changes colour according to your mood.”
Green meant stress, orange indicated anxiety and red related to something calm. I made up green and orange, I said they were happy and sleepy. I mean, why expose a 7-yr-old girl to anxiety or stress?
She wore it on her point-finger as it was too big. During the next 24 hours, the ring changed colours quite a few times. I watched her as she coveted it, for example when she went to sleep, she gently placed it on a table next to the paper sun-cap she wore all day (rain or shine). The cap bore the emblem of a nature foundation.
When I was six or seven years old, a boy in school gave me a pendant. It was an oval shaped stone that changed colours according to my feelings. I only remember the one feeling: love. And his name. It was Bob. It was the first time in my life that I felt what it’s like to be that one special person, the exclusive object of someone’s affection. Even special enough to have been given a mood-stone meaning love. That pendant meant the world to me. As did Bob. The next week, he gave my best-friend a porcelain doll. An act I simply could not understand.