Most of the women sitting around the table on this frigid evening have cared for and buried ailing husbands, many have outlived some of their own children, and most have endured ailments and heartache. There's a matter-of-factness in their banter, as the conversation shifts from stories about yesteryears to a cautionary tale about a woman in B Building who fell in the shower and wasn't discovered for a day and a half. Still, there's a lightheartedness to the evening. Helen Dickerson is wearing her bright red snowmen socks.

Jane Vega, who comes just for the conversation, says that when she was living alone in her old neighborhood in Magna she realized there was no one left to talk to, so she immediately put her name on the waiting list for the senior high-rise. This is Jane's philosophy: "Each person is a world, and you could go on a big adventure to get to know them."

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Sometimes, senior housing is not unlike your average junior high cafeteria. More than one resident of local independent living apartments confided that there are cliques, especially in the dining rooms.

Even Marilyn Modling, a naturally outgoing woman, was told "this seat is taken" when she first moved into Park Lane senior apartments. But senior apartments also provide a steady stream of new people to meet, says 89-year-old Marilyn.

Clinical psychologist Annice Julian of the Center for Human Potential, who counsels residents of Utah assisted living facilities and nursing homes, notes that "a lot of my elderly people don't know how to reach out. They want someone to reach out to them." Learn to engage others, even if you're shy, before you get old, she urges. "My advice is, start doing it when you're young, so you're in practice." And have intergenerational friendships, suggests Salt Lake geriatrician Carole Baraldi, who points to a great aunt, a nun, who has forged friendships with the children of her friends, mastering e-mail in her 80s. Jetta Hepworth, the woman who doesn't want to make any new old friends, has an enduring friendship with her adult grandson James, who says that Jetta stays current and is fun to be around.

But family, while a source of pleasure, can't always be counted on to provide the kind of day-to-day interaction and diversion a close friend can provide. Many parent-child relationships don't lend themselves to intimate revelations; and children might live out of state or be busy with jobs and children of their own.

Ruth Frank was living in Jerusalem when her children persuaded her to move to Utah to be near daughter Judy. Ruth, who spent most of her adult life in Maine, where she founded the state's Guild of Spinners, had to leave her prized loom behind in Jerusalem, arriving with one suitcase and her dog.