by Cynthia Thornton

Have you ever received a gift that was small, maybe inexpensive, but felt so precious you could never find words to describe the feeling? 

Many years ago I was given a small token from an elder and the memory of it has stayed with me for decades. 

The elder was an old man that lived on the reservation near our home. My mother would visit to look at his silver rings and necklaces, set with turquoise and coral.  She would bring me along and I’d wait outside, wandering around, mostly annoying her by asking when we’d leave. One day, I was catching horned toads and putting them in enclosures of twigs and rocks I built under the shelter of an ancient tree. The elder came out of his studio and watched me for a moment and asked why I was catching the toads. I told him I was bored and there was nothing else to do. He asked me to come inside and see what he was making. He showed me his work bench, tools and files and a machine with a spinning wheel he said was a grinder. He told me to pick my favorite stone and I chose a piece of red rock about the size of a quarter. He took the piece of rock and held it to the grinder and shaped it, telling me that as long as my brain worked, I could never be bored. I must have looked skeptical, because he told me “I am never bored! In my mind I can go anywhere, I can imagine being a bird and fly, or I can think of what I want to do or eat or what I want to make. Your mind has no limits, think of your dreams, are you bored when you dream?”. He smiled, because he saw that I couldn’t remember ever being bored in my dreams. He said to hold out my hand and he enveloped mine in his large brown one and said “this is for you “ and placed a red stone bird in my palm. 

I carried that piece around for many years, a constant companion until the day I gifted it to a friend that needed it. It was a small gift, one of many I received from the jewelry maker, but it was the one that left the biggest impression. 

I’ve become a jewelry maker myself and I’ve made my own stone amulets, but only a handful. It has long been a treasured dream to make stone amulets for my family and friends using ancient symbols as inspiration.