This is 48: Author Megan Stielstra Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

"I’m not interested in participating in our culture’s age-related expectations but I will say this: When I was 7 years old, I wanted to be a witch. It’s time to get on that."

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, editor, and teacher Megan Stielstra responds. -Sari Botton

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P.S. A reminder that in my book, everyone who is alive and aging is considered an Oldster, and that every contributor to this magazine is the oldest they have ever been, which is interesting new territory for them—and interesting to me, the 58-year-old who publishes this.

When you see a piece featuring someone younger than you, try to remember when you were that age and how monumental it felt. Bring some curiosity to reading about how the person being featured is experiencing that age. Or, if you prefer, wait for the next piece featuring someone in your age group. Not every piece will speak to every reader. I’m doing my best to cover a lot of ground and to foster intergenerational conversation. Please work with me.

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Megan Stielstra, 47.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2^nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and regularly with The Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor with Northwestern University Press.

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How old are you?

48

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

I work primarily in personal narrative, so I’d say I associate with whatever age I’m writing about. If the essay’s about me in Michigan, I’m 15. If it’s about me in Italy—18. Chicago—31. Oakland—46. Right now I’m writing about living on Wedding Row in Las Vegas. Across the street from my apartment was a 24/7 chapel, people getting married at all hours. One night a convertible pulled up to the drive-through and I’d had a margarita or two or five. “Are you sure?” I yelled, hanging off my porch. “Did you really think this through?”

I was 45 years old, and as I write the scene now, at 48, I’m trying to remember the woman I was then. She was swimming in grief; a few months into a divorce, a few months into the pandemic. She was living alone in a new city with her then 12-year-old son. She was editing other people’s memoirs, story after story of a human body and how it survives. She was afraid of the virus, her future, her shadow.

It wasn’t that long ago—three years—but I’m light years away. Still: I want to honor that part of myself. She got me here. She got me through. And there are women who are right now walking the same walk I walked then and I want them to know: the sun will come out. I promise you, it’s coming.

My peers have been saying this for years; in their art, their politics, their parenting. They’re finding all sorts of daring and delightful ways to push back against the societal norms of aging in Western culture and I hope to be counted among them.

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

I’m reading Ana Božičević right now and am in love with this line from 5 THINGS AT 40: “You are not old, time’s not really a thing.”

I’m not sure what it means to feel old or to feel young. Honestly?—I don’t care. Right now I feel amazing and I want that at every age, for myself and all of us.

Stielstra and her "happy kid" at two different ages.

I’ve got a happy kid. I’m financially secure and getting to this place was my priority as a single mother, especially after the last few years. I have a new job with good people doing work I believe in. I’m in a new relationship, with all the magic and giddiness and bluebirds singing on your shoulder that stories usually attribute to young love but I have it now. You get to have it now, whatever your now is, 48 or 36 or 72 or 15.

My peers have been saying this for years; in their art, their politics, their parenting. They’re finding all sorts of daring and delightful ways to push back against the societal norms of aging in Western culture and I hope to be counted among them.

Can I give you another Božičević line?

“You’re made of stars, that’s fucking cool.”

I’m not sure what it means to feel old or to feel young. Honestly?—I don’t care. Right now I feel amazing and I want that at every age, for myself and all of us.

What do you like about being your age?

I know that no feeling is final. I took that line from Rilke but it’s really the best way to say it—there have been times when I hit bottom and truly thought I was there for good. When I called my dad to tell him my husband left me, he said, “I know it’s dark right now, but the sun will come out. I promise you, it’s coming.”

I didn’t believe him then.

I do now.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Also: when I was 45 I woke up one morning in Vegas and a stripe of my hair had turned white overnight. I look like Rogue from the X-Men comics. I love it so much. I’m a goddamn superhero.

Stielstra, right, as a young girl, with her dad, who passed away last week.

What is difficult about being your age?

There are so many things in this world that I hoped would be better by now, for my kid and all of our kids.

When I wrote the above sentence I was specifically thinking about our treatment of the planet, but I just read it over and honestly, I could be talking about anything. Gaza. Ukraine. Body autonomy. Housing insecurity. Our broken healthcare system. Mass shootings. Mass incarceration. It’s hard to get this close to 50 and know that so much profound work has been done on the ground by local communities and organizers to make our world safer, more equitable, more beautiful and still we are here. I try to just focus on the work and most days I succeed. Other days, I want to rip down the sky.

Also—and this is a seemingly small thing by comparison—recently at the Music Box they were showing Mad Max: Fury Road—my favorite movie—in black and white as George Miller originally intended. I was dying to see it in this format but it was playing at midnight and I am no longer the girl who starts her night at midnight. I miss that girl sometimes. She was a hell of a lot of fun. But hopefully I can still be fun and home by eight p.m. because I am very tired. I work very hard. My bed has nice sheets. Ambien exists. etc.

I know that no feeling is final. I took that line from Rilke but it’s really the best way to say it—there have been times when I hit bottom and truly thought I was there for good. When I called my dad to tell him my husband left me, he said, “I know it’s dark right now, but the sun will come out. I promise you, it’s coming.”

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected?

I’ve spent twenty-five years living and working in Chicago. This city made me. I thought it was home. But when the pandemic hit, my son and I stayed at my mom’s place in Michigan for a few months before we moved to Vegas. I told him it was because grandma needed help but the opposite was true; I was an exposed nerve.

The forests and lakes in my hometown fed something in me I’m still trying to understand, let alone articulate. I can hear my own thoughts, my own heartbeat. I can see the stars. You can’t see the stars in the city. There’s something in all of this about healing that I’m still trying to figure out.

I never thought I would leave Chicago, let alone move back to Michigan. Right now I’m splitting time between the two. I’m not sure where home is, or if it’s even a place, but I’m trying to listen. My own thoughts. My own heart.

Order Megan Stielstra’s books.

What has aging given you? Taken away from you?

I would like to talk about female friendship. I would like to talk about the women who show up for me, again and again. Who taught me about the world and made sure I didn’t run into moving traffic or date the guy with the [redacted]. Who gave me keys to their homes when I really, really needed them, and yelled at me when I tried to give up writing, and reminded me to laugh, and dance, and loved me and my kid and my big shiny dreams.

Without these women I would have drifted untethered into the clouds a couple of decades ago. The years we’ve been together, growing up with the joy and the bullshit—that’s trust.

Left, with friend Dia in Oakland in 2022; Right, with friend Sarah in Evanston, in 2021.

Aging gave me trust.

Aging took it away, too. The end of my marriage dropped an atomic bomb on my idea of trust. But weirdly? What brought it back?

Younger me.

During the first year of my divorce, I was editing my first two collections for reissue with Northwestern University Press. There are stories in both books about love, and I kept trying to change the text: DON’T DO IT, MEGAN. THIS WILL NOT END WELL. But my editor, Anne Gendler—a genius, this woman—kept coming into the margins saying, “What if you stay true to the girl you used to be?” Rereading those sentences from that younger version of myself—how hopeful she was, how trusting—gave me back something that I thought was gone for good.

I’m reading a lot of Rebecca Solnit right now. A lot of Mariam Kaba. I’m figuring out what hope means now, in this life, this body. And I’ll tell you what—it means everything.

I am no longer the girl who starts her night at midnight. I miss that girl sometimes. She was a hell of a lot of fun. But hopefully I can still be fun and home by eight p.m. because I am very tired. I work very hard. My bed has nice sheets. Ambien exists. etc.

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

I know how I can be of service.

From the Chicago poet Coya Paz:

The work is enough.

I am grateful I am able to do it,

that every day I wake up to a job I love,

a privilege afforded the very few and I am wise enough now to know it.

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’m not interested in participating in our culture’s age-related expectations but I will say this: When I was 7 years old, I wanted to be a witch.

It’s time to get on that.

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

47. I remembered who the fuck I am.

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

My dad.

He died last week. I'm at his home now in Alaska. When he was nearing 50—right about the age I am now—he quit his job in Michigan and moved to Kodiak Island in the middle of the Gulf. The risk of that still blows me away: to leave what you know, what’s safe, and take a chance on your own self, your own happiness. The man lived to 77 years old and was still climbing mountains. He built a salmon fishing boat in his backyard. He was on the ocean every day where whales flip and fish jump and catastrophe is imminent if you don’t know what you’re doing, but he did. This island was home. He fell in love here, built a life.

Stielstra’s late father on his island, with is grandson, in 2011.

My son and I come up every summer with my stepbrothers and their kids. This past August, my dad and my tiny, 2-year-old niece were having a very involved conversation about llamas. She was wearing llama pajamas. He kept looking at me on the couch with my laptop and I knew he was time-traveling: when I was her age, back when we lived in Michigan, he made me a rocking llama because all the other kids had horses and also llamas are awesome. I was 48 years old, and he was 77, seeing a 2-year-old version of me, which would have made him 31. We're all these ages, all these lives, all these different versions.

The 77-year-old version of him was fighting pancreatic cancer. The 48-year-old version of me just lost her dad.

I hope that future versions can live like he did: the risk and the joy.

I hope she knows that the sun will come out. It’s dark right now, but it will come.

My dad died last week. I'm at his home now in Alaska. When he was nearing 50—right about the age I am now—he quit his job in Michigan and moved to Kodiak Island in the middle of the Gulf. The risk of that still blows me away: to leave what you know, what’s safe, and take a chance on your own self, your own happiness.

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

I am having the best sex of my entire life.

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

I’m not sure if this is an age thing or a me thing, but my doctor recently suggested that I cut back on coffee and I laughed for an inappropriately long time.

“My smokeshow of a mom, 2022.”

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

I like to celebrate the person who did the work of birthing, which is another way of saying call your mother.

My birthday is August 11^th. Can you help me throw some love at my mom? Her name is Ruth. She’s a stone cold fox. I mean, come on. Look at my genetics. Look at where I’m going to land in my seventies. I don’t need to spiral out about my skincare routine or vitamin regimen—this woman is in my veins.