This is 58: Author/Photographer Deborah Copaken Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"Aging has given me the wisdom to say, 'I don’t know,' the strength to say 'no,' the gumption to say 'yes,' and the no-fucks-given attitude to keep going in the face of failure, loss, and betrayal."
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, photographer, and newsletter-writer responds. -Sari Botton
Deborah Copaken is the New York Times bestselling author of Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April, among others. She’s also been a war photographer, TV producer, essayist, screenwriter, and performer. Her most recent book, just out in paperback, is Ladyparts, and she publishes a Substack by the same name.
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How old are you?
58
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
22, and pretty consistently at that. That was the age I stopped being a student, started my life in Paris, and stopped caring about what others wanted for me or thought about me and started living the life I wanted to live on my own terms. I’ve obviously learned and lived a lot since then, and I would never want to go back to that blank slate stage of being 22, but it was a defining moment separating childhood from adulthood. Every year since then has felt like an accumulation of knowledge, gravity, lovers, ex-partners, scars, and lived experience, but into the same basic 22-year-old soul.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I have finally—at age 58—found pure, raw, reciprocal love. So, in many ways, I feel simultaneously reborn as a moony teenager and ridiculously content at my current age because I get to experience the joy of this young love at a time when I’m old enough to appreciate how rare and beautiful it is. Especially after a proverbial (and actual!) forty years wandering in the love desert.
Am I in step with my peers? I guess my answer to that is that I’ve never really pondered that question, so I’m not sure. I meet people where they are, and I expect my friends to do the same for me, no matter our age, marital status, or experience. At the same time, these days I do sometimes have the experience of being in a room of my same-age peers and being struck not only by how different we all look, age-wise—a 57-year-old can look anywhere from 35 to 75—but by how our diverging experiences, this far along in life, have shaped us into radically different molds. Physically, some have given into our age with humility and grace; others seem prematurely aged due to either genes, life stressors, and/or unhealthy lifestyles; and still others are fighting against age with fillers and surgery, which often has the opposite of the intended effect.
I have finally—at age 58—found pure, raw, reciprocal love. So, in many ways, I feel simultaneously reborn as a moony teenager and ridiculously content at my current age because I get to experience the joy of this young love at a time when I’m old enough to appreciate how rare and beautiful it is. Especially after a proverbial (and actual!) forty years wandering in the love desert.
Financially, some of us (cough cough, not me) are obscenely wealthy; others are comfortable enough to be planning retirements; others, like me, are still hustling, sweating, and fretting every month to pay the rent. Professionally, many of us have redefined what success is and/or looks like. Relationally, we’re all over the map, from child-free by choice, to empty nesters married for decades, to still parenting kids at home, to divorced/re-partnered with step kids/blended families, to either blissfully single or wistfully single or on the verge of becoming grandparents. I had my first two kids at 29 and 30 and my third kid at 40, so I’m simultaneously planning a wedding for my middle child while also still parenting a teenager at home. Like I said, we are all over the effing map.
What do you like about being your age?
I like that I’ve reached a moment in my biographical timeline when I’m at peace with who I am, proud of what I’ve overcome, and accepting of the time I have left. This also feels like a time of necessary shedding, pruning, presence, and acceptance. I’ve said goodbye to people, work, and experiences that no longer serve me and embraced those that do.
I’ve stopped getting frustrated by some of the idiosyncrasies and behaviors of old friends and family and started not only accepting these imperfections but really relishing, loving, and feeling empathy for their individual quirks: that anxiety-filled, inflexible friend who will give you only an hour of their time, nothing more, but is still one of the most loving humans you know; the family member who’s limited in their ability to show up when you need them but still craves your connection; the colleague who can’t stop envying the success of others but is otherwise a hoot over a plate of pasta.
I’ve also let go of my ambition to succeed by society’s terms (money, fame, influence) while embracing my desire to define success by my own terms (joy, productivity, gratitude, love.)
I like that I’ve reached a moment in my biographical timeline when I’m at peace with who I am, proud of what I’ve overcome, and accepting of the time I have left. This also feels like a time of necessary shedding, pruning, presence, and acceptance. I’ve said goodbye to people, work, and experiences that no longer serve me and embraced those that do.
What is difficult about being your age?
All the health issues and medications, good lord! I was recently diagnosed with osteoporosis, and I also suffer from various menopause-related symptoms (migraines, UTIs, hot flashes, etc.) so now I have a weekly pill box filled with vitamin supplements, I take a monthly CGRP inhibitor injection for the migraines, and I use both vaginal and systemic estrogen daily, which means a lot of slathering and remembering to change my weekly patch which—menopause brain!—is not always a given. Energy-wise, however, I feel just as vibrant as always if not sometimes more so, since I no longer have three little kids or the millions of things about their lives to store in my head. I have my own room now in my brain, just for me. Sometimes I can even shut the door and hang my do-not-disturb sign on it.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
I remember looking at my mother’s generation when I was quite young, back in the late 60s and early 70s—a time of massive cultural upheavals—and thinking, egads, will I, too, have to put rollers in my hair and wear high heels, lipstick, and dresses when I become a grown-up? I couldn’t imagine having to give up my jeans and T-shirts or my naked face. Turns out? I didn’t have to. I still live in jeans and T-shirts, and I haven’t worn make-up on a daily basis since 1987, so those are two fears totally unrealized.
I also expected that, once I got married, I’d live happily ever after, but—lol—that didn’t come to pass either. I did not expect the level of discrimination a woman my age faces when working at a corporate job or applying for a new one. I have heard, from a researcher who studies such things, that the resume algorithm simply kicks us out of the pool, sight unseen, once we reach 50.
I didn’t expect that my father would die at 67 from pancreatic cancer or how that would feel to me, even now, to have missed out on so many years of his presence and love. I’ve accepted his death, of course, but I still feel cheated by it. He would have loved my new partner. I wish they could have met.
Meanwhile, I thought I’d have ample savings in my retirement account by now, but like many in my generation, felled by the costs of childcare, education, healthcare, unexpected legal fees, and (in my case) several serious illnesses, my retirement plan is to work work work until one day I simply don’t wake up because I’m dead.
I remember looking at my mother’s generation when I was quite young, back in the late 60s and early 70s—a time of massive cultural upheavals—and thinking, egads, will I, too, have to put rollers in my hair and wear high heels, lipstick, and dresses when I become a grown-up? I couldn’t imagine having to give up my jeans and T-shirts or my naked face. Turns out? I didn’t have to.
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Aging has given me the wisdom to say, “I don’t know,” the strength to say no, the gumption to say yes, and the no-fucks-given attitude to keep going in the face of failure, loss, and betrayal.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
Beginning in puberty, I kept trying on different, new identities. As we all do, to a certain extent. The tomboy me gave way to the more feminine me, the studious, risk-averse me became the foreign correspondent me, the feminist me became the radical feminist me, and then there were all the other incarnations that were to come: TV producer me, wife and working mother me, author me, sad me, divorced me, solo mother me, illness-battling me, rising-from-the-ashes me, cheated on and lied to me, phoenix part II me, loving partner me. Now, at 57, I realize I am still all those things as well as the little girl I was at age 4: the one who first scribbled a short story into her My Book About Me at the dining room table and thought, “I like this. I wanna keep doing this.”
The third grader who told her mother she didn’t want to wear dresses anymore, and then wore the same jeans jacket every day until she outgrew it, because this one piece of clothing somehow finally allowed her to feel both powerful and like herself in it. In fact, as I age, I become more and more my core elementary school self again. We are each, I believe, the matryoshka doll amalgamation of our accumulated years, with each past version of ourselves tucked neatly inside our present self, invisible but present, while our non-hollow core is that same little girl who first shamelessly declared, because society had not yet beaten her down, “I am! And I rock!” and kept going.
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 looking forward to sending my last kid off to college, after twenty-nine straight years of parenting; to watch my daughter graduate from med school and walk down the aisle to her fiancé; to enjoy unstructured, parenting-free time with my own partner but also to having all five of our kids (my three, his two) home for the holidays; to keep traveling and exploring the world when I can afford it. At the same time, the way I see it, every day I get from now on is gravy, so really, I’m just looking forward to waking up, realizing I’m still alive, feeling grateful for that, and drinking a hot cup of coffee.
I did not expect the level of discrimination a woman my age faces when working at a corporate job or applying for a new one. I have heard, from a researcher who studies such things, that the resume algorithm simply kicks us out of the pool, sight unseen, once we reach 50.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
This is my favorite age now, the one I’m living. I would never want to return to any past version of myself and, anyway, like I said, those past versions live inside me now so I can tap into them whenever I want.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
Nora Ephron was my mentor when she was alive and, even in death, continues to inspire me daily. This was a woman whose professional energy could not be contained but who also took the time to be a supportive ear and sounding board to her friends and to so many younger women, not just me, while also throwing frequent dinner parties for twenty, stretching herself to work in multiple mediums, devoting love, care, and time to her husband Nick, and being an amazing mother to her sons. To me, she is the gold standard for not only how to live life well but also to appreciate every minute of it and to laugh at its absurdities.
She once told me that it took her three marriages to get it right, and now suddenly I’m living that truth, too, wishing I could introduce her to my new love. I did recently run into her husband at a party, and I had the pleasure of introducing him to my new partner thus: “Nick! Meet my ‘Nick!’”
I’m also inspired by older women who are still working at the top of their game and making their mark: Elizabeth Warren, Lucinda Childs, Laurie Anderson, Meryl Streep, Claudia Golden, who won the Nobel for her work on women’s pay, etc., but also by all those other older women whose names and stories we don’t know and will never know because they continue working behind the scenes and making a difference in the lives of others.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
Style-wise I dress the same as I have forever, favoring a pair of jeans and a T-shirt paired with sneakers or boots plus a sweater when it gets cold and, yes, I still wear a jeans jacket in the spring and fall. No one will ever call me a style icon, and that’s okay. I’ve got my daily system in place, my simple uniform, and it works. Beauty-wise, I’m letting nature take its course. My hair has had one grey streak since I turned 34 and published my first book (stress? probably. the reaction to it was brutal…), and I’ve chosen to do nothing to it or about it. I’m interested to see what I will look like when the rest of it goes gray, but judging by my parents’ hair, that might not be for a while. My dad didn’t go fully gray until he got cancer at 67. In my mind’s eye, because he died so quickly after his diagnosis, he’ll always have brown hair.
I won’t do fillers or surgery, despite the many lines that have appeared on my face, unless the continuing drip-drip-droop of my eyelids ends up one day blocking my vision, because that would be covered by insurance since it’s a health issue. I earned my lines, some of which I don’t necessarily love—the ones around my mouth, for example—but they are mine, they mark my years, and even if I had that kind of disposable income, which I don’t, I wouldn’t give it to my face.
Nora Ephron once told me that it took her three marriages to get it right, and now suddenly I’m living that truth, too, wishing I could introduce her to my new love. I did recently run into her husband at a party, and I had the pleasure of introducing him to my new partner thus: “Nick! Meet my ‘Nick!’”
Health-wise, I’m just trying to stay on top of the inevitable decline by walking every day, doing yoga a couple of times each week, engaging in strength training for my osteoporosis, eating if not a wholly plant-based diet then one that is rich in fruits, grains, and vegetables with the occasional serving of chicken or fish, avoiding sugar (but not always…I still love a good dessert), getting enough vitamin D, taking D-mannose to prevent UTIs, wearing a systemic estrogen patch, from now until death, to keep the ravages of estrogen loss at bay, and applying daily dollops of local vaginal estrogen every night before bed, both for UTI prevention and for sexual health and wellbeing. A healthy sex life, to me, is as critical as everything else I’ve listed herein, and I feel lucky to currently have one.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
Like Dylan Thomas, I refuse to go gently into that good night. I’ll be out here making a ruckus until I croak.
As I age, I become more and more my core elementary school self again. We are each, I believe, the matryoshka doll amalgamation of our accumulated years, with each past version of ourselves tucked neatly inside our present self, invisible but present, while our non-hollow core is that same little girl who first shamelessly declared, because society had not yet beaten her down, “I am! And I rock!” and kept going.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
I like to celebrate it in some small way, but I also hate making a fuss. Memorably, on March 11, 2020, I had ten friends over for a casual birthday dinner, and we were all joking about whether I should blow out the candles or not. Then our phones started buzzing with notifications of Tom Hanks having Covid, the NBA shutting down, the borders being closed, and suddenly the issue of blowing out candles or not was no longer quite as funny. The next day, the world shut down.
A few days later, I came down with a god-awful case of pre-vaccine Covid. Last year for my birthday, my partner took me surfing in Costa Rica the week prior—which I loved!—but I spent my actual birthday evening having a casual sushi take-out dinner with my friends Stacy and David and their adult kids, which I also loved.
I’m answering this questionnaire before my 58th birthday, and it will be published two days after, so I’m not sure what I will have done, as you’re reading this, but I’m thinking a small family dinner or maybe we’ll do a staycation the weekend prior? I’ll let you know in the comments below!
As for presents, I much prefer experiences to stuff. At this point, I’m trying to get rid of stuff. You know, because: death. My mom recently sent me my wedding dress for my daughter to try on, but we ended up finding her a new one at Kleinfeld, so now I have this giant box of dress no one wants taking up valuable space in my small Brooklyn closet. Anyone need a used 1993 wedding dress with a chocolate stain on the front from a failed marriage? Anyone?
I promised I would say what I did for my birthday in these comments, so here you go: My partner took me, two of my kids who live here, and one of his two sons, who's here on spring break, out to dinner at a local French restaurant here in Brooklyn that happens to make my all-time favorite dessert, an Île flottante. (Chez Moi, for those who live here...great place, easy on my ears, excellent food, and you must try the île flottante, if you've never had one and even if you have, because oh my god, it's insanely good.) We sat there for three hours, laughing, eating, and catching up. I loved every second.
So beautiful:
“We are each, I believe, the matryoshka doll amalgamation of our accumulated years, with each past version of ourselves tucked neatly inside our present self, invisible but present, while our non-hollow core is that same little girl who first shamelessly declared, because society had not yet beaten her down, “I am! And I rock!” and kept going.”