Plain ole rocks? No way!

            When I was 18 years old, my dad entrusted my younger brother and me with the job of driving our family home to Louisiana from New York State. We'd been visiting my grandparents, but as we were packing up the back of the covered truck, I spotted two bulging cardboard boxes by the back bumper.  

            "What's in there?" I asked.

            "Rocks," my mother said.

            "We're taking two boxes of rocks back home? For what?" I wanted to know.

            "To remind me of home," my mom said.

            That made no sense to me. I didn't understand why we had to drag 75 pounds of rocks over a thousand miles.

            That is until I drove 50 miles to buy three little rocks to go in our yard.

            Rocks have played a part in our family for a long time. Not just from my mother, but two of my brothers are geologists. They're always stopping to look at rocks on the side of the road, and all rock piles are an adventure.

            When our sons were young, they saw some of the rocks my brothers had collected and begged Santa for a rock polishing machine.

            Santa obliged.

            What Santa didn't know was that it takes hours to polish a few rocks. He also didn't know a rock polishing machine is louder than a jackhammer pounding away on concrete.

            We ended up putting the rock polishing machine in the garage but I could hear that machine clanking and banging inside the house.

            But when the rocks came out of the polisher, they were stunning.

            Although I'd never admit this to my mother, for the past few years, I've grown increasingly fascinated by rocks. Whenever we go to a park or creek, I'm always on the lookout for geodes – rocks that are bumpy and coarse on the outside.

            It's easy to walk right by a geode because they're plain and unattractive. But when you break one open and look inside, it's like gazing into a crystal palace of purples and silvers.

            People unfamiliar with geodes are always surprised when they see the beauty inside, and I like to think that people are the same – often rough on the inside yet beautiful on the inside.

            I thought about the rocks I love one afternoon when my husband and I decided to update a small, round flower bed in the back yard. I could envision a few small boulders in the center, surrounded by flowers.  How hard, I thought, could it be to find those rocks?

            It was about as hard as, well, a rock.

            I love to shop locally, but the nurseries here said they didn't carry what I wanted. One nice sales person told me to look for a rock yard and I found Apex Stone near Sealy.

            When I walked out the showroom's back door, I couldn't believe the acres of rocks, granite slabs, pebbles, stones and boulders stretching out in front of me.

            I was in heaven.

            I took my time marveling at all the different shapes of rocks, examining the different colors in the dozens of varieties of rocks.

            Thanks to my mom and my brothers, I knew to look past the rough exterior and to instead search for veins of silver, flecks of sparkling granite and interesting color curves.

            An hour later, I gave the cashier $2 for my rocks, came home and arranged them in our flower bed. The flowers I'll plant there will add color but the real beauty, for those who know where to look, is hidden in those three simple rocks.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.