Longreads | Beth Byrnes

The Un-y-moon – Part II

Posted on July 26, 2014 22 Comments

Here is part II of the wedding series, tweaked and amplified a bit. I had several requests to re-post them together. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a moment of caution last fall when I first wrote this series, and feared that I would alienate everyone, including my husband, by being so […]

To be or not to be … a parent

Posted on July 12, 2014 6 Comments

When I was on jury duty, we had a lot of downtime waiting on the benches outside the courtroom until our case resumed. In a previous post, I mentioned that the halls would reverberate with the anguished discussions of people involved in contentious divorces and child custody battles. I often sat next to a fellow juror in […]

Addressed to chill

Posted on June 7, 2014 23 Comments

Landing in Frankfurt airport one summer during high school, we suddenly realized we had dropped into the midst of menacing signs and barked warnings about terror threats and hijackings. That was my first brush with extreme force. Later, visiting Brazil, I ran into it again as military police, in full regalia, seemed to be posted on every corner. Then, Geoffrey and […]