When people ask "What book changed your life?" they generally mean what book opened your eyes to some new idea, made you see the world in a different way, or changed your role in it. What words made you go, "Ah ha!" and pushed your life onto a new course.

I've never had a satisfactory answer for that question. I've been influenced by many people, books, music, movies, and circumstances. I consider myself a product of small incremental changes, not one major change.

The other day it came to me that there was one book that did change my life, literally changed it, not in the way people think, not because of its content or its poetry or the philosophy of its author, but through a strange series of coincidences.

On April 24 of my senior year at Killeen High School, Dr. Jenny Lind Porter, a Poet Laureate of Texas, gave a speech to our sixth period English classes. I had study hall sixth period but I used to hang out at my creative writing teacher's class and she gave me a hall pass to attend the speech. I don't remember anything about the speech but I must have been excited by it because, in a moment completely out of character, I bought her book On the Trellis of Memory: A Psychic Journey into Pre-history.

I've never been given to impulse purchases. In high school, I had $5.00 a week allowance which I spent on records, books, movies stamps, stationery, and sewing notions instead of my lunch for which it was intended. I knew where every penny went and I planned carefully for all my purchases. I rarely had more than a dollar in my purse. However, I also did the grocery shopping for my parents and for some reason this particular day I still had the change from the previous night's trip to the commissary on me. When I looked in my purse, I had just enough money to buy the book. My autographed copy is here on my desk.

Fast-forward a year to college. In my contemporary poetry class of 13 students there was this guy who sat across from me. We were the only two students who sat up front and, at times, the class discussions consisted of just him, me and the instructor. He was amazing. He always did all the reading and even read unassigned critical works on the poets we were studying. He had a fantastic memory and constantly quoted from Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, and Cicero. He had a quote for every situation, so much so that our teacher once accused him of making them up.

One day he quoted from On the Trellis of Memory. I don't think I ever finished reading that book but I recognized the quote. So after class I went up and said in amazement, "You've read 'Trellis'!" Turns out that he had taken classes from Jenny Lind Porter here in Austin. We talked and talked and...

Reader, I married him.

Since that fateful day, I've never found anyone else who has read or even heard of On the Trellis of Memory. Have you?