Jade Necklaces

J and I have a long history with these necklaces. I had a lovely bone necklace that I got when I was in Hawaii. While I was there, I also learned a Native Hawaiian tradition that you buy a necklace for a loved one, and you wear it for a while before you give it to them. If the necklace is bone, the colour will change slightly as you wear it, and this is seen as a part of the person’s soul entering the necklace. Then, when it is given as a gift, it is very intimate. Eventually my bone necklace broke, and so I got rid of it.

Then, several summer’s ago, I was away in Connecticut for a summer, working at a YMCA camp. Since we were going to be apart, we decided that it would be nice to buy each other necklaces, wear the other person’s over the summer, and then exchange them when I came back. We did so, (choosing jade over bone for the durability) and that’s how we ended up with these necklaces, which we wear all the time. In Kansas and in Ottawa, we got lots of comments on them, given that they are unique and noticeable. I liked that, because we got to tell the story often.

Now we have moved to NZ, which is where the necklaces are made. I didn’t even realize this until several days after we arrived, when I noticed that I had seen quite a lot of necklaces like ours. Then it hit me; they are a part of the culture here, and people wear them to express their Kiwi heritage! Which is wonderful, but makes me a bit uncomfortable. Here I am, no Kiwi heritage at all – I’ve only been in the country for a couple weeks – wearing their necklace. It makes me feel like I’m pretending, or like I’m a rather insensitive tourist. Neither of which is really what I’d like, especially because they have such a special meaning to us. No one has commented on our necklaces (which is reasonable, since they look just like everyone else’s), and I think that if they did, they would be happy for our story behind them, and not be bothered at all. But it still makes me a bit nervous. Plus, I liked the fact that they were unique before, and it’s a bit of a pity to lose that. I have to confess that I did not foresee this particular issues. Who’d have thought that we would blend in better with mainstream style in NZ than in Kansas or Ottawa?