Beth Cardall’s Diary The first time I saw him was on Christmas Day, 1989. As the Bing Crosby song had it, it was a white Christmas. Actually, more of a white-out Christmas. Nearly thirty inches of heavy snow had fallen during the night, and it was still falling, with brisk winds sculpting the snow along the roadsides into four-foot-high curled drifts that looked like frozen ocean waves. The radio said that more than five thousand homes in the city had lost electricity. Charlotte and I were among the fortunate who still had power and a cozy fire in our wood-burning stove. Our Christmas tree looked like I felt inside: small, sparse and dry, with too few lights. Truthfully, I felt ugly, inside and out. I had been pretty once, or at least that seemed to be the general consensus, but not so much lately. I felt worn-out and broken, like an old running shoe. Through the ringer, my mother used to say. It sounds silly to me now, but I was only twenty-eight and I already felt old. I was much too young to feel that old.
