This is 47: Sara Lippmann Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

"It’s all patriarchal bullshit, these 'traditional markers,' designed to limit, cage, and contain us."

From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”

Here, author Sara Lippmann responds. - Sari Botton

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Sara Lippman

Sara Lippmann is the author of the novel LECH, published by Tortoise Books in fall 2022, as well as the story collections Doll Palace (re-released by 7.13 Books) and Jerks (Mason Jar Press). Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and has appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, Best Small Fictions, Epiphany, Split Lip, Joyland, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She has been teaching creative writing for over 20 years to people of all ages and currently teaches with Jericho Writers. Raised outside of Philadelphia, she lives with her family in Brooklyn. Find her online at www.saralippmann.com. 

How old are you?

I turn 47 today.

Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think? 

My grandmother spent the last months of her life at the Riverdale Home for the Aged up in Yonkers. Every time I visited, she’d whisper conspiratorially: “I’m surrounded by old people.” The lady was 95.

But I get it. Age is a state of mind, etc. We are who we are without quantification.

Because my long-term memory is sharper than my short, and because my wardrobe is stuck in the 90s, my teen years become a default dial—the disconnect of which then shocks me to hell when I look in the mirror—but I no longer feel like I’m 16, thank god. I don’t really feel a particular number other than who I am. Maybe that’s what my Omi meant: we are all numberless like that.

My grandmother spent the last months of her life at the Riverdale Home for the Aged up in Yonkers. Every time I visited, she’d whisper conspiratorially: “I’m surrounded by old people.” The lady was 95.

Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, or what that means, exactly, but I guess I feel young for my age. It could be generational—my immigrant grandparents seemed old even when they were relatively young. War will do that to a person. Maybe it was their European formalities, their insistence on a strict diet of liverwurst and red cabbage, an adherence to Shabbos naps, an excess of wool and tweed.

 I’ve always been a late bloomer. When I was a kid, some 39 paper clips tall, and struggled with speech, people always assumed I was even younger than I was. Having a fall birthday made me one of the youngest in the class, the last to drive. There is something about my size—small, flat, etc.—that’s made me ripe for infantilizing. Once I got a Goodreads review that was like, “how could someone so petite, be so fierce and profound?”—which enraged me to no end—but it’s long been the story of my life. We know this narrative: not all bodies are taken seriously.

As a little sister I was always trying to keep pace with my older sister—which meant that I was experimenting and partying or whatever when she was despite our four-year difference. So, some things I did early, I guess.

According to whom? Who gets to set the clock? By what set of social standards and expectations? It’s all patriarchal bullshit, these “traditional markers,” designed to limit, cage, and contain us. Look, I’ve complied. I’m married twenty years. My kids are nearly grown. Certain boxes I’ve checked like a good girl, not that I regret any of it.

Career wise, I feel both ancient and new. Twenty years out of my MFA program, but still an emerging writer. My peers (writers and otherwise) are all much farther along than me career wise, but one thing I’ve stopped doing is playing the comparison game. Once I eliminated all those toxic “shoulds,” I’ve felt so much lighter and brighter, like I’ve sloughed a mountain of dead skin. Who needs microdermabrasion? Maybe I’ll always be emerging. Maybe this is just the beginning.

Lippmann as a child.

What do you like about being your age?

Perspective. Humility. Centeredness. Gratitude. Honesty. Vulnerability. Acceptance. I’ve learned how to advocate for myself, to get the mental health care I desperately needed decades ago. I adore my home and family. My kids are fun and interesting and loving and kind and at that age where we love hanging out together, but they’re also fairly independent, which means my husband and I get to spend more time with each other, too. Soon enough we’ll be empty nesters so I’m just enjoying our time under one roof.

We’re healthy. My parents are healthy (spit three times.) I have wonderful, generous friends and a supportive writing community of which I’m lucky to be a part. I’ve surrounded myself with good people.

My immigrant grandparents seemed old even when they were relatively young. War will do that to a person. Maybe it was their European formalities, their insistence on a strict diet of liverwurst and red cabbage, an adherence to Shabbos naps, an excess of wool and tweed.

What is difficult about being your age?

Whenever I shun the camera, my husband reminds me today is the youngest day of our lives. Obviously, there are changes. I don’t know anyone who loves waking up in a cold pool of night sweat, or squeezing their tits into a panini press, or watching sunspots expand to the shape of California. I’m constantly managing orthopedic issues. Every day a new humiliation but that’s the stink of being human. My forthcoming novel, LECH, addresses this head on. Decay is everywhere: Catskills decay, rogue rodent decomposition, the slow march of age upon the ailing body of my Alta cocker character, Ira Lecher. As much as he fears death, he is obsessed with it. Rot feeds life. While I’m in no rush to hasten the inevitable, that’s the cycle. The alternative to aging is… so all kvetching aside, I’m inordinately grateful to be here in this fragile, resilient body.

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?

People love to say getting old sucks but it’s actually extremely awesome. I’ve spent a lot of years feeling insecure and miserable and depressed and pessimistic and riddled with self-doubt and desperate for approval and hung up on how a person—how a girl, woman, etc.—should be. But now that I’ve let go of a lot of that garbage, I feel more like myself than ever. Yes, the world is burning. Everything is urgent and dire. But I am discovering an ability to inhabit moments more, to stay inside of them and linger in their expansiveness. Maybe that sounds woo-woo. Maybe that’s basic Buddhism. I’m no Buddhist. It’s not like I can stop time. Time is a mother fucker. If only my neuroses could power the planet. Maybe the word is appreciation. There is a clarity of purpose that comes with getting older. Maybe some people are born with it or learn this early on in life, but it’s taken me a long ass time to get here. It’s also about embracing that fulcrum of contradiction: the slowing down and the speeding up. The preciousness and the irreverence of it all.

One surprising truth: food in the teeth. Remember how your grandparents always had food stuck in their teeth, and you were like, ew, that’ll never be me? Well, hello, YOU.  

What has aging given you? Taken away from you?

It’s robbed me of my collagen but granted me my soul.

Lippmann as an angsty teen.

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

I turned 45 at the height of the pandemic and it was a cartoon lightbulb moment – watching every last fuck fly out the window. I happened to be on submission at the time for my novel and I was dealing with all the feelings around success and failure, definitions that have been packaged by capitalism and forced down our throats like caged geese before a foie gras slaughter. So much of my life has been spent playing by the rules or adhering to some phony promise of the American dream or trying to fit a certain mold or write a certain way or please the right people and what a goddamn shame that it took a global disaster (and an absolute shitstorm of a presidency) to slap me with the realization that it’s all a scam. None of that crap matters. There are so many (so so many) more pressing things.

All we can do is live an honest life. Whereas my 30s were spent compartmentalizing aspects of myself (writing from parenting from living etc.) as if to mitigate shame, judgment, and discomfort, it’s now integrated. Which isn’t to say my kids are reading my work as bedtime stories. But the stuff that makes me is a fluid current, which feels right.

I used to feel disconnected from my body but since I started running—at 40—I’m more at home in my skin. I’m stronger, have better stamina, and I’ve become more comfortable with discomfort that comes with tacking on miles. I’m not giving up so readily.

Oh, and guess what, babies? Sex is better than ever, too.

Career wise, I feel both ancient and new. Twenty years out of my MFA program, but still an emerging writer. My peers (writers and otherwise) are all much farther along than me career wise, but one thing I’ve stopped doing is playing the comparison game.

What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?

I’d love to reach a point where I can hustle less and write more. To put out a few more books and go on some fabulous residency, which felt unrealistic before. And maybe teach at one of these places. You hear about writers leading conferences on some remote Greek Island, which sounds like a pretty phenomenal gig. I took a lot of time off when I was pregnant and raising kids without childcare. I didn’t write for years. I’m still not writing enough. But you can’t write without living. I’d like to live more, fight louder, be a better agent for change. Touch more lives. Love more fully, if that doesn’t sound like a Live Laugh Learn meme, but there you have it. I want to watch my kids continue to grow and find their people and pursue their passions. Travel’s high up on the bucket list too, which makes me really sound like a retiree signing up for the Odyssey tours, but there’s so much world out there and I’ve been in my little dark pocket for way, way too long.

Preorder LECH, Lippmann’s new novel.

What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

As much as I have a soft spot for nostalgia (and the older I get the more years I’ve to look back on) the rosy wash that comes with hindsight is often disingenuous. I recently attended my 25th college reunion, and welp, I don’t need to be on meal plan ever again. They say that depressives live in the past, and the anxious feel unmoored by the future, and given that I have a healthy dose of both: I’m pretty OK with where I am right now.

My kids are fun and interesting and loving and kind and at that age where we love hanging out together, but they’re also fairly independent, which means my husband and I get to spend more time with each other, too.

Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?

My great aunt, the Montanan painter Jessica Zemsky. She’s turning 99 this month. The woman is amazing in every way—from her pigtails to her bear tooth necklace to her holiday themed nails (my favorite: candy corn) to her mile-high-club license plate to her incomparable zest for life and for art. I wish we lived closer.

Another inspiration—aging and otherwise—is the writer Alice Kaltman. She is one of the liveliest spirits I know and constantly embraces new things. She’s an avid surfer, runner, swimmer, and dog lover. Writing is her third career, at least, after dancer and therapist, and she’s terrific at it, with a new book of stories launching this fall. Recently, she’s taken up drawing and is working on a graphic memoir. I love her openness, her outlook, how she keeps reinventing herself. Plus, she’s a total silver fox.

What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?

I buy countless drugstore glasses because I keep losing them (see also: forgetfulness) and I keep sizing up. I’ve also gotten into audio books because my eyes get tired more easily. I add subtitles whenever I watch TV because my hearing has been deteriorating. I drink less, stretch more, carry my foam roller around like a security blanket.

Lippman in her old Frye boots.

What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?

Who’s to say what’s age appropriate? I don’t dry my hair, although I do dye it, as I’ve been going gray since I was 18. My skin care is lacking. I mean, I rarely wash my face at night. I don’t know if that’s a vestige of youth or plain gross. I need better moisturizer. I still wear the rick rack skirt I bought at a thrift store in high school and the Frye boots I got on Thayer Street in 1995. I legit still wear my prom dress, god help me. I’m not a shopper. When I do shop, it’s Beacon’s Closet or Old Navy for sports bras and whenever I take my teenage daughter to Urban Outfitters, I’m like hey I can totes pull off that dish-rag sized halter top. (Reader: I cannot.) But I do run in short shorts. And I love vintage clothing for the stories and life baked into them, which is maybe why I can’t get rid of anything. I drink cheap beer and keep my weed in a Ziploc. And I still attend Dead shows like a teenager. Only the crowd is mostly septuagenarian, so maybe that is actually an age-appropriate choice for me.

I still wear the rick rack skirt I bought at a thrift store in high school and the Frye boots I got on Thayer Street in 1995. I legit still wear my prom dress, god help me.

What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?

Turning 35 sent me into a depressive tailspin. I became consumed by what I hadn’t achieved, what I hadn’t done, all the things I wasn’t, I buried myself in a pit negativity, which sounds rather self-indulgent—in this economy!—and yet, it was very hard to claw out of this extended postpartum despair. At 40 I resolved to start running and the mental health benefits saved my life, and what I said earlier about the freedom of 45 clinched it. I’m uncomfortable with attention, which makes me extra awkward around birthdays. But I have a bunch of friends all born within a week or two of me (over a span of years) so lately we’ll huddle up, Virgos and Libras, for a group gathering in September. There has been so much bad. Why not celebrate the good?