I bought my favorite dress on my birthday, July 15, 1977, in a chic town tucked along the Costa Esmeralda. I was traveling around Sardinia with some wonderful women, living on $20 a day, wandering back roads in search of cheap hotels with baths and no bugs. We went to the beach almost every day, and I could never resist a chance to prowl through another ruined fort or castle, or stumble into a cave, or clamber around an ancient pile of rocks. But, on my birthday, we meandered into Porto Cervo to window shop.

Everything was beyond my price range. And then I saw the dress. It was mauve, in a deliciously filmy cotton, and it could slip off the shoulders. It swirled when I walked. I loved it. So I bought it. Anyway. My hair was to my waist. That afternoon, after the beach, I braided it into small braids, and then undid it when it dried so it eddied around my face.

I wore the dress for a magical birthday dinner at a table under a grape arbor at a Sardinian restaurant. The evening was so warm. We laughed. We toasted. I had the wit to avoid the grappa. And I felt pretty.

The dress was a character at that birthday party. Although I wore it again, it never felt the same. It was magic.

Mary Janigan, Toronto