Jackson Free Press

Audrey Dabbs, 75, the mother of three, grandmother of six and great-grandmother of four, has painted, done ceramics, made wire-wrapped rock jewelry and acted with the Terry Station Players. She's organized and become queen of a Red Hat Ladies Society—The Red Hat CLASS (Charming, Lovely, Ageless, Sassy Sisters)—and got together a monthly domino club. She's collected rocks for 30 years. Almost all of them are on her 26 acres in Simpson County, in a bed of pea gravel just for them. Soon they'll make the move to Byram, like she did in March.

On her kitchen butcher-block island, several of her rocks are displayed—like the good-sized chunk of white, opaque rock that she wasn't going to keep at first. Then, looking up at her from the ground, formed by the black smudges and a hole in one of the rock's smooth sides, was a little girl's face. "I threw it back and then looked and said, 'Oh, little girl, I'll take you home with me.'"

Her first big rock came from her country home church. "I remember standing on it, looking in the church window when I was a little girl," Dabbs explained about the rock that took five of her nephews to move from the churchyard, once the church had moved elsewhere.

As a tour escort, Dabbs collected rocks as special souvenirs. She has found pebbles in the courtyard of the Louvre in Paris, and in Belize she picked up a nice-sized rock in Belize that reminds me of a cut of meat I once ate in Kansas City, a culotte steak.

When she visits a friend in Arizona who has a ranch, she always takes a box of sweet potatoes; it comes back full of rocks. One son-in-law, picking her up at the airport commented that her suitcase was heavy enough to be rocks—it was, Dabbs told me, laughing at the memory and going on to tell me about the time she was changing planes in Houston. A man from the airline approached, telling her that her box of rocks had come open and he'd put them into two boxes for her. Then he asked if she could step over to the window with him. "There's this guy out there that wants to know what the lady looks like who's taking rocks home with her," he told her.

What Dabbs has brought home over the years is more than rocks. She's told her daughters to line her grave with her rocks. Until that day, Dabbs will remain active, living each day fully, collecting memories.