An Excerpt from How to Cook a Coyote, The Joy of Old Age by Betty Fussell

When I first arrived at the old folks’ home, a little sign just visible through a window in the dining room Julia had left the club and the world at her death in 2004, but I was delighted to carry on the tradition. It was here, at the table beside the window beside the roses, that my group of friends gathered each morning. An intimate group that became family, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

Which was frequent. Of the four original women who first joined me at the table by the rose window, none remain. The club iterated. New people came, old people went. By the time COVID hit, we were five, varying in age (seventy-seven to ninety-nine); gender (two guys, three gals); background (East Coast, West Coast, Midwest); physical condition (three walkers, one oxygen tank); and character (reserved, flamboyant, sincere, playful).

All five of us wore hearing aids, reading glasses, and sensible shoes. We were well educated and well traveled; we had led long, hardworking lives in the arts and sciences under the mores and manners established by twentieth-century upper-middle-class America. And, nearing the end of our lives, we had become all but invisible.

It was our peculiarities, not our geriatric genre, that drew us together. The oldest of us, stone-deaf but sharp of mind and sturdy of body, was as commonsensical as the nurse she’d been in World War II. Our youngest, a dandy who ran his own art gallery, declared himself gay after his divorce and relished sharing gossip with a wicked sense of humor. Next to him was a passionate lover of algae whose work had taken him around the world to teach and study marine biology, and whose curiosity had never ebbed. Our mother superior, frailest in body but strongest in mind, was a depth psychologist and coach whose two Mayo surgeon husbands had left her with wisdom and stories aplenty. And then there was me, my native instinct to entertain or, some would say, to outrage. I thought of my role, though, as an enthusiast who longed to record every word on a secret tape recorder. Of course, I never did, but I often ambled back to my unit and wrote what I could remember of our oftentimes ludicrous dialogue:

“What’s a Strawberry Moon?”

“I don’t know. But we’re supposed to have one visible at nine nineteen today.”

“Never heard of it. What is it?”

“I dunno. Some kind of full moon.”

“Did you see the moon last night? A little after nine o’clock?”

“No, I’m in bed by then.”

“You think it’s red?”

“What? No, I said bed. Not red.”

“The Strawberry Moon isn’t red? You’d think it would be.”

One of us takes out her iPhone and begins looking up Strawberry Moons.

“Did you hear Starbucks is going to start serving wine?”

“Starbucks? Oh, that’s awful. I don’t think I want wine with my coffee.”

“You never go to Starbucks.”

“Not now, but I used to, with my daughter.”

“They sure made a success.”

“I read they were bringing up the middle class.”

“What does that mean?”

“‘Starbucks is bringing up the middle class.’ I got that from The Atlantic.”

“Up to where?”

“From where?”

Our Googler interrupts. She’s found something on her iPhone.

“‘Strawberry Moon’ is what the Algonquians called a full moon in June because it coincided with their large strawberry crop. Some European countries call it a Rose Moon.”

“Well, since strawberries are California’s biggest crop, we should have a Strawberry Moon at least once a year.”

“If we could only see it through the fog.”

“Oh look, there’s some sunshine now. We’re lucky.”

“Nope, now it’s gone.”

“I like Starbucks coffee.”

“We’re drinking it now . . . I’m told that’s where we get our coffee.”

“Did you know David was missing yesterday?”

“Missing?”

“He’d moved himself into Personal Care, but they weren’t ready for him, so they put him in Memory Care.”

“Isn’t his wife in Personal Care?”

“Yeah, and she was all ready to move into their new apartment there together, but he just jumped the gun and had friends move all his stuff in, but he hadn’t gone through any of the proper channels.”

“So where did he go when he was missing?”

“He got in his car and took off without telling anybody.”

“Doesn’t say much about Memory Care, does it? Or maybe too much.”

“If there’s a Strawberry Moon, what about the other fruits?”

Copyright © 2025 by Betty Fussell. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press, an imprint of Catapult Book Group.