Tag Archives: Margo D. Beller

A Final Climb to the Top of Hawk Mountain

05 Thursday Sep 2013

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atop the mountain

BY MARGO D. BELLER

The months run by. It seems like yesterday that I was looking at an Eastern Phoebe on the first full day of spring. Now the summer is over, the kids are going back to school (yay!),and the birds that came north to breed are heading south for the winter.

On Sept. 1, many hawk watches opened for “business.” These platforms, where people scan the skies for eagles, osprey and smaller hawks are located atop or near ridges where rising warm air, and northerly wind create an aerial highway for these diurnal travelers.

New Jersey has lots of these places, from Cape May in the south, to Sandy Hook along the eastern coast, to the ridges in the west along the Delaware River, and many others in between.

But before I discovered the treasures of my home state, we went west to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. This place, where men once blasted migrating hawks out of the sky for sport, was bought by a rich woman and turned into a sanctuary.

What draws the birdwatchers, is seeing the birds practically at eye level from the topmost lookout. But there is a price to pay. The higher you go, the harder the climb, with many rocks that shift under your weight.

The first time we climbed to the top, we were beguiled by all the warblers we found along the way. It was a weekday and the crowd was small. We had come prepared, and enjoyed watching the raptors fly. On the way down, we even found a bird we’d never seen before, a Bicknell’s thrush. We knew we had to return someday.

That happened a few years later. However, rocks shift, mountains get worn from the rain and people get older. Our second climb up – no warblers to be found – was on a Saturday. There were many more people making the climb and sitting at the top.

Watching the hawks up close was just as wonderful. But the climb down, for we without wings, was much more hazardous than last time. Even with a walking stick, I came close to falling several times, which scared me.

There were older people making the climb in both directions, and they seemed to have no problem. But there were others who had to travel very slowly, helped by younger people. They all kept going because they were drawn to the hawks, and I hope they weren’t disappointed.

But when we got to the bottom of the mountain, MH and I knew we wouldn’t be making that climb again.

As I said, there are lots of hawk watches closer to home, and my favorite one allows us to drive to the top, take out the folding chair, and watch the show. It will do.

The Loss of a Friend, and a Fear of Falling

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

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inside an old church in Stellenbosch

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Back in April, I wrote about my friend and former employer, who had just turned 95. I had called him on his birthday. During our talk I was reassured that he was not only doing as well as could be expected physically, but was as mentally sharp as ever – writing columns and reading The New York Times. His attitude was upbeat and, as usual, he was full of good humor. But he was philosophical, too.

“Anyone who says they’ve never gone through any bad things in his life hasn’t lived,” he told me at that time. I had hoped to have an old age as good as his.

Unfortunately, about a month after that conversation, my friend fell and broke his ankle. He lost his mobility, and went downhill fast. He’d been in and out of rehab several times. I learned he died in his sleep four months after our talk. I regret not calling again, but his son said, those times that my friend was awake, he wasn’t talking on the phone anyway.

We are warned about the danger of falls as we get older. I think of my great ­aunt, another vibrant, sharp person, and how she was never the same after she fell, and broke a leg bone. She, too, was shuttled in and out of the hospital, and that is where she died. I think of the falls I have taken, including one where I fell flat on my face. I’ve had swellings and a black eye, but no broken bones. Yet. I have not put in the types of safety devices my elderly father had in his bathroom, and I do exercises that, I hope, help me keep my balance.

Still, there’s always the next one.

Despite knowing, logically, that I am aging, emotionally, I feel much younger. The thought of the inevitable decay frightens me as I get closer to 60 – my
mother’s age when she died. Even if I live to 95, ­and my friend’s older brother is very much alive at 100, ­is that a good life if I am physically or, worse, mentally infirm?
Does quantity of years equal quality?

My friend had a good life to the end, surrounded by his family and friends. But there are no guarantees in this life. Situations change. Many of us Boomers run around like youngsters, refusing to believe we will die. One of my friends, a few years older, like me, has no children. Unlike me, she is single. She worries about having the money to retire, and pay any medical bills. She told me that when she gets to the point where she can’t take care of herself anymore, she’s going out on a “sunset cruise,” with a laced cocktail, and is not coming back.

I can appreciate her thinking, even as I recoil from the thought of hastening the Creator along. I do not think my 95­-year-­old friend feared the end. I wish he was still around so I could ask him.

This “Old Lady” Can Be a Mean Girl

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

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meanoldlady

BY MARGO D. BELLER

When I was growing up, and I am sure when you were growing up, too,
there was usually a rundown house in the neighborhood in which lived an
elderly person. In my neighborhood, it was a woman. She lived alone, the
lawn was weedy, and the house needed painting.

We referred to her as “Crazy Mary” or, “the witch.”

I was around 10 years old at the time, and she could’ve been 50 or 60.
Didn’t matter – to us she was old. We’d dare each other to run in her yard,
but ran away when she came out to yell at us. I can’t remember what
happened to her or the house.

Now that I’m in my mid-50s, I know exactly what “the witch” was going
through because there are times I’m the neighborhood’s Mean Old Lady.

My house isn’t rundown, and my lawn hasn’t gone to weeds – quite
the opposite. That is why I get mad when I find children, deer or the
occasional adult, crossing my (unfortunately) un-fenced yard.

I have no children, and until the last few years, my street had few children
on it. But now my neighbors’ kids have kids, and some still live at home.
Three generations live in a house on one side of me, four generations now
live in the house behind, and my last neighbor said the new owner of his
just-sold house has a small child.

In short, I am now surrounded.

Perhaps if I’d had kids I would be more flexible about their random
wildness; the yelling; the running across property lines. After all, I was a kid
myself yelling and climbing over fences, and making messes.

However, I don’t have kids. I know they are capable of wonderful things, but
I rarely see it. To me, they are just noisy at a time when I get more easily
distracted by noise – especially now that I work from home. It has become
harder to concentrate as I’ve aged, and I used to live in some very noisy
neighborhoods in the past. But that was in the past when I was younger.

On occasion I’ve gotten into trouble with kids (and their parents) for
reprimanding them. Embarrassed, I apologize and calmly try to explain
myself. Luckily, we’ve worked things out – at least to the extent that no police
were ever called. I tell myself to leave them alone. As long as they keep
moving, and don’t harm anything, it’s OK. (I think this about deer, too.)

In this era of Facebook, I fear there is a page about a mean old lady with
my picture on it.

My husband and I enjoy the company of our relatives’ children, and when I let down my wariness to speak to some of the local kids, we are friendly to each
other. It doesn’t hurt waving at them, and saying hello.

Still, to them I am “old.” What goes around comes around. When I watch
parents with kids, I wonder about those decisions I made that will come
back to haunt me when I really become old.

Memories of Worms, and “Gamma’s” Sauce, Bloom with My Apple Tree

18 Thursday Jul 2013

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apple 3 margo

This is a banner year for my apple tree. All photos by Margo D. Beller.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Every year, when I make apple sauce, I think of two people. The first is a former coworker whom, upon being given a pint of my sauce, said, “Remember, the only thing worse than biting into an apple, and finding a worm, is biting into an apple, and finding half a worm.”

apple 2 margo

There’s something in those apples.

He said this after I told him how I have to carefully peel and chop a lot of apples just to make a pint of sauce because I don’t spray my tree, and most of the apples have something in them I must remove.

I have the one tree. Some years, such as last year, it gives me few apples, and I must race outside to get them before the squirrels do. (Being sloppy eaters, what squirrels drop often draw deer, which leave their unique calling cards behind, in bulk, under the tree.)

apple 4 margo

Enough this year for applesauce.

But this year I have a lot of apples, and that means I am standing at the counter, peeling and chopping, and making a lot of sauce.

I also do a lot of thinking.

That’s why, besides that former coworker, I think of my Gamma – which is how I pronounced grandma when I was a toddler, and the name stuck.

Gamma was not the easiest woman to live with. She was the only daughter in a large family. She lost her mother when she was a teenager, and was expected to take care of her father and brothers. She refused. Her younger brothers never forgave her. She got married, had two children, and threw out her husband. Those children spent a lot more time with their aunts and uncles than with her.

And yet, somewhere along the line, my grandmother learned how to cook the traditional Yiddish foods. She made a wonderful tsimmis of sweet potatoes and carrots and other seasonings. She made a great kugel. She made chicken soup by boiling a chicken, and adding vegetables and little bits of dough known as knadlach. Her matzo balls were airy and light, without using seltzer.

For some reason I got along with her much better than her children, my sister or my cousins. When she came over, I couldn’t wait for her to cook. My parents and sister couldn’t be bothered, but I would ask how she made it. She wouldn’t tell me, most likely because she didn’t know. She just did what she always did, a bit of this and that, nothing written down.

She also made applesauce. My mother would bring us over to her house, and she served the delicious applesauce she had made. Unlike me, she would go to the store for her apples.
Sometimes the sauce was red; other times it was yellow.

Her recipes died with her. I should’ve watched what she did more carefully.

So I have had to find my own way, and try to duplicate what she did. I’ve yet to do it. However, the applesauce I make, as I think of her, comes close.

I Can’t Hear the Birds in the Forest for the Cicadas on the Trees

06 Thursday Jun 2013

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BY MARGO D. BELLER

I was driving to one of my favorite places to find birds in Morris County, New Jersey, near where I live, when I heard a strange noise and wondered what was happened to my engine.

When I stopped at an intersection, I realized it was not my engine, but an invasion.

Specifically, a cicada invasion.

You know the routine. It’s been the same since we were children. The middle of summer is defined by the whir of cicadas by day, and crickets by night. Both insects are doing the same thing – the males are calling out their availability to mate with females.

This, however, is another type of cicada. This one has the science fiction name of Brood II.

These cicadas will hang around for a few weeks calling, mating and creating new cicadas, then dying – their young not appearing for another 17 years as fully-formed teenagers itching to call and mate.

So far, this plague has not made it to my backyard – yet. Plague isn’t too strong a word either. Cicada, according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, is a Latin word for locust. Unlike the locust, the cicada won’t ruin crops, and it won’t bite you. But it is an ugly insect, and it makes quite a din when you have a couple of thousand going once the soil gets warm enough, as it recently did.

When I got to my birding location the cicadas were flying everywhere. The noise forced me to listen very hard to hear the catbirds, yellow warblers, house wrens and Baltimore orioles, among others. But with the exception of a few blue-gray gnatcatchers, none of the birds appeared to be going after the cicadas. Perhaps they had only just arrived this June day and the birds were too busy singing to protect their breeding territories. As I said, the usual New Jersey cicada feast starts in July when baby birds need to be fed.

Or perhaps the birds were overwhelmed by the sheer number of them.

I don’t know. But I do know I was more than a little annoyed at having to work harder than usual to hear anything over the din. I had been in the mountains of neighboring Sussex County the previous day, and had heard over 50 types of birds, and not one cicada, for which I was now grateful.

Trying to identify 50 bird calls is hard enough when they’re all going at once. Trying to identify 50 bird calls with an extra layer of cicada whirring is torture.

At some point I would hope the birds realize the early insect bonanza they have, and start eating. Birds aren’t stupid, or they wouldn’t have lasted so long.

But for this birder, the end of Brood II can’t come soon enough.

My Weekend “Hangover” Keeps Me in Bed on Mondays

20 Monday May 2013

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Early morning chirping in the nestbox, aside – I want to sleep in. Photo by Margo D. Beller.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Another Monday morning and I’m hungover. Again.

Not from alcohol. From trying to outrun Father Time while cavorting with Mother Nature.

For over three decades, I would rise for breakfast, and rush for a train to take me to an office. About two-thirds of the way through those three decades, my husband and I moved to the suburbs, so that one train became two trains, and the longer commute meant I often had to rise before dawn.

That ended about two years ago.

I am lucky to have a job at my age. It was much harder for an unemployed someone, age 50 and older, to find a job during the recession. And it’s not much easier now, when things are allegedly improving. But I made friends along the way, and one of them found me my current job, for which I work from home.

When I had become a serious birder, I had wished I had more time out in the field – time that was spent working or commuting. But a funny thing happened now that I am home, with a commute measured in minutes rather than hours. I find I still don’t have enough time.

I used to get by on six to seven hours of sleep. Now, like a newborn baby, I crave eight to nine. It is a struggle some days, particularly Mondays, to rise from bed. I hear this year’s house wren busily singing his territorial song at the nestbox every dawn. Part of me wants to rise and see what else is out there. Usually, I go back to sleep.

Except on the weekends. After five days spent mainly in my house, I must get out. I must fit seven days of life into two: see my friends, work in my garden, walk in the woods, drive to another part of the state (with or without MH), and look for birds.

I rise early and walk and drive for miles. I climb. I pull weeds in the garden, and lift heavy pots. The hours fly by. I forget about things like age, and how I’m going to pay the bills.

Then, usually around 8 p.m. on Sunday, I pass out in my chair, spent. Somehow I get to bed. Suddenly, it’s Monday morning. Fifty-plus-year-old knees and back hurt. I’m exhausted, and I’m depressed – hungover yet again.

I don’t know if I am unusual. I see women older than I am walking every day on my street, no matter the weather. Most days I do take a pre-work walk and run short errands during my lunch break.

It’s just Mondays, when I am depressed, that I find that even though I work from home, I still don’t have the time to do what I want. Because this job is a contract position – the new reality for some of us in journalism – I get no paid holidays or personal days. No work, no pay. And so I must use the weekends to the fullest.

Welcome to the “golden years.”

The Saturday Blog: A Toast

18 Saturday May 2013

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bottles and a glass. photo by Julie Seyler

The stuff of celebration. Photo by Julie Seyler.

Tomorrow, The Write Side of 50 turns six months old. Since November 19, we have posted, without fail, six days a week, every week. We could not have done this without the consistency of our contributors. So we raise a glass to Bob and Frank (they’ve been with us from the get-go), Margo, and Jeannette. And a clink to our readers, for your continued comments, support, inspiration, and for giving us a reason to bring out the good glasses. Salud!

Grappling With the Letting-Go of Anger

08 Wednesday May 2013

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Angry orchid. Photo by Julie Seyler

Seething orchid. Photo by Julie Seyler

BY MARGO D. BELLER

The other week, I was awakened in the middle of the night from a dream about a raging argument I was having with my uncle, who died in February. The argument was about his mother, who had died 30 years ago this coming August. It was so disturbing – I could not go back to sleep.

The man spent his life complaining of the hardships his widowed mother created for him and his family. Much of the time I was growing up, my uncle’s family was on the West Coast, and my grandmother had been my mother’s problem for decades.

I got along with this grandmother, so when my mother died, I gladly took over her care. Yet my uncle continued to complain about his mother, including paying for her grave, when he and his wife moved back east.

I consider myself a rational person. I thought I had worked through my anger at various family members over the years. But with my uncle’s passing, it seems I didn’t resolve anything.

Anger is a terrible thing. I’ve had a hard time controlling it since I was a child. It has gotten me into trouble many times over the years. When something doesn’t make sense to me, I question. When something seems downright stupid to me, I question and disparage. This would make me popular with peers, but not with figures of authority, including parents and supervisors. (Questioning is great for being a journalist, but makes one a lousy employee.)

So over the years, I’ve learned to channel my anger by taking myself to the woods where I can concentrate on other things – the lovely day, making sure I am still on the trail, not tripping over tree roots and rocks.

But mainly I concentrate on the birds I might find overhead and underfoot. When I am out in the field, the only thing that angers me is myself for not finding the bird I hear singing to identify it.

Now I wonder if I am have only avoided the issue.

As I get older, I admit to being glad I have no children to resent me for unintentional or intentional actions. However, I also don’t have children to take care of me as I age – as my parents, grandmother and uncle did. What happens when my husband and I can no longer take care of ourselves and our house?

Aging and the money scare the hell out of me. Makes me angry, too. I doubt I’ll have the kind of retirement my parents had, and my husband’s parents continue to enjoy in their 80s. They take their trips, they go to concerts with their friends, and family checks on them.

Is this why I woke from screaming at my dead uncle about his dead mother in the middle of the night, my fear and anger at something over which I have no control? Probably. I will have to keep working at it.

The Aches and (Ever-Growing) Pains of Aging Eased with a Walk and a Talk

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

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present and absent

Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

Now that I am in my mid 50s, I am reminded daily, not only about the uncertainties and challenges of aging, but the consequences. There are aches and pains and sudden fatigue and weight that will not go away. And unexpected mental lapses. There is also the fear I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.

My mother died over 30 years ago when she was 60. When she was my age she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. This past March, her brother died of complications from dementia at the age of 91. He had more years, but he was never the same after his wife died eight years before of Alzheimer’s, which made the dementia seem like a cruel joke. Which one had the better of it – my mother or her brother?

I lost a friend to a heart attack, and another was recently diagnosed with a form of dementia. Friends are losing their parents. Popular
musicians and actors I grew up with are dying.

Where have you gone, Annette Funicello?

That’s no way to think, my husband constantly reminds me. Which is why those birdwatching walks I take in the woods provide better relief than any anxiety medication. So does keeping up with friends while they’re still around. I recently called one of these friends, who had turned 95. He not only has the distinction of being the oldest of my friends, but he’s my only friend that is also a former employer.

When he answered the phone, he knew who I was. He could hear me “fair,” and we easily talked about family, the news of the day, politics and how much he dislikes sports, as though we were still in the same office rather than 1,000 miles apart. He pens a weekly essay for the writers group at the senior residence where he lives, and reads The New York Times daily to keep up.

He doesn’t understand the Internet and social media, so telling him about blog posts isn’t worth the effort. He stopped looking at email when his inbox got stuffed with spam.

“I live in the past,” he said, preferring old-fashioned letters and phone calls. He doesn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, and wouldn’t want one, although he has a lot of interesting stories he could tell about his military career during World War II. I would like to age his way. His family is nearby, and people look in on him daily. He is content with his life, despite the sad things, which includes his wife’s passing.

“Anyone who says they’ve never gone through any bad things in his life hasn’t lived,” he told me.

As we were ending our conversation, my 95-year-old friend told me something astonishing. He has weekly conversations with his brother in Florida, who just turned 100! He seemed in awe of the fact his brother is still alive, well, and has all his faculties.

So am I – of both of them. I can only hope to have the same luck.

As Winter’s Grip Loosens, Here Come the Birds

18 Thursday Apr 2013

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two Canada geese

Two Canada geese. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

There is a brook beyond the backyards of some of my neighbors. Canada geese have been hanging out there for years. But each spring they get very restless, fly up more than usual, call to each other continuously, then circle and land not far from where they started. Some long-held instinct tells them they have to be going. But they and their forebears have been on the fields and office park lawns of suburbia for so long they wouldn’t know where to go if they had a GPS strapped to their bills. Meanwhile, their cousins, the migrant Canada geese, have been heading north to their breeding grounds for weeks in long, v-shaped skeins.

Like the local geese, at this time of year, I feel restless. But I know the cause. I’m waiting for the birds to come north. In particular, I am awaiting warblers. Despite their name they are not the sweetest of singers. Their “songs” tend to be more like buzzes or sounds like “weezy, weezy, weezy” and “sweet, sweet I’m so sweet.”

But after a long winter it is wonderful to be outside, looking up a tree that is leafing, and suddenly seeing a hint of movement that turns out to be a brightly colored, yellow and black bird. Then the fun starts – which bird is it? Is the pattern that of a magnolia warbler or ablack-throated green? Is it on the ground or at the very top of a tree or someplace in between? Warblers are an enjoyable test every spring for bird watchers. Their variety forces you to remember their coloring, habits and calls.

You arrive at a trail and hear nothing. A few steps later you are surrounded by calling birds. It is not uncommon to find seven or eight different types of warblers (not to mention other migrating birds) in one small area that has the benefit of seeds to eat and/or water to drink and bathe in. It can be overwhelming. During the winter I feel sluggish and slow, cold and achy no matter how high I keep the heat. (And with the cost, I don’t keep it that high.) But when the days get longer, and the winds finally start coming out of the south, winter is loosening its grip. I know the floodgates will open and the birds will come.

That is why I am restless. Just as I know the birds are pushing through many obstacles to get north to their breeding grounds, I know there will be several Saturday mornings when I will rise earlier than I’d like and drive to an area I favor in New Jersey’s Great Swamp that is hard to hike, but rewarding because it’s literally off the beaten (or boardwalked) track. There will be birds there, and if I am lucky, I’ll be able to know what I’m hearing, and will see the singers without straining my neck too badly from all the looking up. I can’t wait.