Aging Out - Lucy Schiller

Jul 31, 2026

Uploaded by Finn

Memoir opening chapter recounts the author’s relocation to Pittsburgh and the emotional disorientation of starting over alone. It frames “the geographical cure” of moving as an attempt to change the backdrop of life while recognizing that time still passes. The narrative traces earlier disruptions, including pandemic-linked relocation to Denver and the death of her grandmother from Covid, setting up a reflective focus on oldness, aging, and the unsettling way questions about age function like riddles.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryStory & Novel

FormatPDF

Pages234

Reading Time6 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

AneW Home, Land Spancon, A List of Fears

Relocating to Pittsburgh and feeling dropped by fate

Time passing and noticing what disappears

Prior moves after teaching fellowships and the pandemic

Early reflections on oldness and aging

The rented house in Pittsburgh and daily life details

[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this Flatiron Books ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at [us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup](us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup)[ ](us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup)[For email updates on the author](For email updates on the author), click here. [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please [notify the publisher at: ](notify the publisher at: us.macmillan.com/piracy)[us.macmillan.com/piracy](notify the publisher at: us.macmillan.com/piracy). [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) To S, D, and E [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) 1 ANEW HOME, LARD SPONCON, A LIST OFFEARS Many days in Pittsburgh I felt as if I had simply been dropped by some gigantic hand, just as, when I was a child, I used to drop my Sims indifferent rooms of a house that I had designed for them. I had landed in Pittsburgh not knowing anyone. At the time, I was unsure why I had come there specifically. Now, I see it as a half-desperate plan to simply change the background scenery of my life for the millionth time.“The geographical cure,” some people call it—moving. I was always doing it, all the way to Pittsburgh, where I wandered around for a while, wanting to stop time. Inarguably, time was passing. Sometimes when things that have always existed no longer exist, you are reminded of this: time, yes, obviously, passing. I couldn’t believe I was doing it again, I felt, while still totally believing I was doing it again, this wholesale switching-up, alone. Before Pittsburgh I had been in Central New York, in a little college town, teaching on a fellowship that was meant to span a year. Before that, I was meant to be in Germany on a similar yearlong position, but the pandemic had struck halfway through, and I had landed, after some torturous windings, in a bedroom in a house with my maternal grandmother, Mary Ann, in Denver. It was there that I had begun to become preoccupied, vaguely, with the concept of oldness, and aging, though I would not begin my deep dive into the aging industrial complex until later. In Central New York, my bedroom window looked out at a perfectly rectangular bit of tree in the distance that lined up neatly against the perfect horizontal line of a telephone cable. I often sat in my bed and adjusted my head slightly to make them line up just right: Still, I can remember the slight click of that right feeling. From there, in the bed, I regarded a map. I settled on Pittsburgh for the fact that it sat six hours away: doable for a person with a bad back and with the ability to basically fit everything they owned into their car. Pittsburgh was replete with universities where I hoped I might be able to pick up work. Also, from the bed I found a small house on the side of a hill to rent for $850 per month, into which I would move sight unseen. Later that month I drove away from the cozy college town, where the preponderance and fragrance of the swamp cabbages had stunned me, and through the Rust Belt, Buffalo, Erie, then Butler County, Pennsylvania. Then across the West End bridge, a peeling yellow behemoth straddling the Ohio River. Some people call Pittsburgh the “Paris of Appalachia,” but tome it felt like San Francisco viewed through warped glasses, so much water and greenery and hill. The house—my house—in Pittsburgh was less than six hundred square feet but it was nestled into a vertiginous seven-thousand-square-foot lot, a steep slope facing downtown. Because it was built, almost sod-house-style, into the slope

FAQs

What role does her grandmother’s death play in the author’s reflections on aging?

She recalls learning that her other grandmother, Anita, died of Covid and describes the confusion and frustration surrounding how people ask about age, which becomes intertwined with her growing sense of oldness.

Jul 31, 2026

Uploaded by Finn