It was 40 years ago today I was married for the first time. We were 18 and living in Estherville, Iowa.

After striking out in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which we'd been told was an "18 state" (not so), we'd hitch-hiked north through Minnesota and then east to Ironwood, Michigan, "Home of the World's Tallest Fibreglas Indian." I wore a red calico granny dress and he wore purple striped bellbottoms and a purple-pinstriped cotton shirt. We exchanged vows in a storefront insurance office; the salesman, who was confined to a wheelchair, was a justice of the peace in his spare time. His small terrier dog never left his side.

The other young couple there, who were virtually identical to us, served as our witnesses, and then we served as theirs, and afterward they gave us a lift west as far as Minneapolis.

One year later we were parents of a newborn baby boy,

and a year after that I stepped off a plane in Los Angeles carrying my one-year-old, and never looked back.

This time of year always has meant new beginnings for me.