This Is (Almost) 72: Nina Gaby Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"My grandparents were very old at my age, and my father died just three years older than I’m going to be."
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, psychiatric nurse practitioner and writer Nina Gaby responds.- Sari Botton
How old are you?
Wow, old enough to have been at one of the first Stones concert in the US (and tear-gassed at said concert when Mick Jagger shrugged off his jacket—I was in the front of the crowd as it rushed the stage!) and to be sober for 42 years, and on a third or fourth career. That makes me 72 in May, proud Gemini, cusp of Taurus!
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
I have a lot of nodal moments at different stages of my life…they seem so condensed in the beginning, and now they just stretch out more slowly, even though time feels sped up. I think that would only make sense to someone living it.
Many of us Boomers, raised on rock-and-roll and the Age of Aquarius, are a strange and privileged lot. We led a charmed existence in many ways…
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
Many of us Boomers, raised on rock-and-roll and the Age of Aquarius, are a strange and privileged lot. My friends and I talk about this all the time. We led a charmed existence in many ways (the best music, all that hope that our country would always right itself and that we could always reinvent ourselves, everything would be okay) and I wonder about our resilience now. It has not been tested in ways that other generations’ resilience has been tested, or is currently being tested.
We worry about all our stuff, because no one wants it. One friend calls it “excavating,” another calls it “tidying,” my husband frets about where all the books are going to go, but I just look around call it “time to take a nap.” In that sense we are in lockstep—it was all such great stuff when we got it.
A number of my peers have died. Sheer luck helps me feel younger, I suppose. I do not plan to retire and feel this strange sense of personal affront at peers who have—like, we all worked so hard to get where we are, why are you giving up? Working keeps me feeling more vital but also proves to me that maybe I’ve not cultivated enough other stuff to look forward to. Like golf. But I think I would hate it. Maybe chess, except it would require mental multitasking.
What do you like about being your age?
More often than not, I just do what I feel like and not what I should. And people call me “hon.” I can get away with a lot.
I do not plan to retire and feel this strange sense of personal affront at peers who have—like, we all worked so hard to get where we are, why are you giving up? Working keeps me feeling more vital but also proves to me that maybe I’ve not cultivated enough other stuff to look forward to.
What is difficult about being your age?
The same. I just do what I feel like and not what I should. (And people call me “hon.”) And doing what I want just makes for a messy house and unpaid bills and poor planning for the future. Not to mention crappy lab work from my food choices (“I’ll just have the Dark Russet potato chips for breakfast, thank you”).
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
My grandparents were very old at my age, and my father died just three years older than I’m going to be. I think my grandmother was always very old—a trauma survivor from the Pogroms, relegated to staying home after her sweatshop stint, as was customary for her generation. I never expected to follow in her footsteps, but by the same token, I loved having her lap to cuddle in, and my choices in life mean that I will never have my own grandchild to cuddle in my lap. So it’s not surprising, but I guess it is surprising that it makes me so sad.
Also, after decades of taking care of myself and being a Boomer who tends towards magical thinking, I did not anticipate having to accommodate for a chronic illness.
I have developed a rare inflammatory disease called Sarcoidosis which affects fewer than 200,000 people a year. Granulomas can pop up in any organ system, requiring biopsies and regular medical tests of all sorts. Most recently a needle to my head revealed granulomas growing in my skull (not brain) but my lungs have not progressed to fibrosis and my heart remains clear. Sarcoidosis can be fatal or it can spontaneously disappear. There is no cure. There is a treatment which I have declined, as the side effects can be worse than the symptoms, at least in the early stages. This put me at odds with the first medical team I worked with but have since found specialists that agree with my decision. One common symptom, weight loss, did not happen for me, which I find disappointing (because of all those vintage clothes still hanging in the closet that don’t fit.) Needless to say, living with uncertainty has offered some profound changes in how I move through my day and I’m trying to find a productive way to write about it.
I garnered moderate fame and a living from my art before I even finished my BFA, peaked and realized that was as good as it was gonna get. So I switched completely and went to nursing school in my mid-thirties as a “non-traditional student.” Nursing school? Me?
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
I LOVE being able (as obnoxious as it is) to say, “Look, I’m 71 years old and you can’t tell me….(whatever the argument is about.)” I HATE that I have a chronic illness and even if I wanted to take up golf, I couldn’t walk up the hills.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
Every damn thing is previewed or reviewed through the scrim of aging. I can’t just seem to have a conversation without thinking it through in this new context, this new time frame. Not that it is always bad, not at all. Just different.
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 feel like I skidded into place just in time, or early. What I mean is I garnered moderate fame and a living from my art before I even finished my BFA, peaked and realized that was as good as it was gonna get. So I switched completely and went to nursing school in my mid-thirties as a “non-traditional student.” Nursing school? Me? Nowadays people do that, but then it was considered way past prime. Best move ever, as I’m now a psychiatric nurse practitioner with independent practice, very much like when I had my own art studio. I came later to writing, maybe missed a milestone there, which is a whole other story, and didn’t publish a book until I was 65. I always wanted a child but did not want what came with it: marriage, giving up too much; kids are a crapshoot. But the person who was never going to get married DID, another best move ever, and here we are hunkering down together during Covid and driving each other to medical appointments. And today celebrating our daughter’s 31st birthday, having made THAT milestone just in time. And I have a studio again (but no fame this time around.)
After decades of taking care of myself and being a Boomer who tends towards magical thinking, I did not anticipate having to accommodate for a chronic illness. I have developed a rare inflammatory disease called Sarcoidosis…
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
60 was great. That would have been a good place to stop.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
My father’s second cousin Marvin. Visiting him after he had been in a severe accident in his late 70’s, I saw all these medical textbooks piled up on the hospital bed. “Of course,” he said—reading them so he could consult with his surgeons about how to save his legs. And then visiting him for the last time over a decade later, still with his legs, he had just won a case with the DMV to keep his driver’s license. “So I can get to my Spanish class.” Why Spanish? I asked him. “Because I don’t know Spanish.” And my mother’s older sister Mae, who did her own manicure the day before she died so that for her funeral no one else would have to. And of course, Gloria Steinem on turning 40, “This is what 40 looks like,” rocked my world.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
I never thought I’d give up wearing my Norma Kamali shoulder padded dresses from the 80s. I mean, I still have them but…hey, do any Oldster Magazine readers even know who Norma Kamali is, and want to buy some great dresses?
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
Went gray and stayed gray. I LOVE it when younger women tell me they want to do the same when they are “old.” I feel my work there is done.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
Since I was born in 1950, it always felt special to celebrate my new decade during the beginning of a new decade. I stayed sober for my 30th birthday. On my 40th birthday I found out I was finally pregnant. At 50 I went to a Joni Mitchell concert in New York City, bought an inn in Vermont, wrote a bunch of short stories. At 60 I lost forty pounds, went on a long trip up the North Eastern coast, felt like a million bucks. For my 70th I had very big plans: a writer’s retreat in Costa Rica where I would stand under a jungle waterfall on my birthday, followed by an artist’s residency, and something else I don’t even remember. But Covid. Everything suddenly shut down in terror. I’d developed health problems which put me at greater risk. So, I walked up the hill (slowly) to our property line—it was sunny and blue-sky perfect—talked on the phone to a dear friend who had turned 70 eleven days before, listened to the bomber planes circling the state to thank the “essential workers,” and then wrote an essay about not being so essential anymore, which was later published in a journal for psychiatrists. As I walked back down the hill that day, my masked daughter had driven up from Boston to surprise me from across the yard, a three-hour drive just to sit across the yard and surprise me. My husband had kept the secret despite my tears earlier in the day. And now I realize instead of grimacing at the idea of 80, I plan to heartily embrace it. To paraphrase Steinem: …This is what 80 [will] look like.
Great interview. I hope Nina has another thirty years to do whatever she wants.
I resonate big time with Nina's vintage take on life, her loose-fitting way in the world, and her adaptability. Our peers have indeed lived a charmed existence. Isn't it interesting how we thought it would always be that way?