The People Who Only Exist in One Part of Your Life
There is a woman I see at yoga whose name I do not know.
We have been attending the same classes for long enough that I know where she likes to put her mat, which poses she quietly ignores and that she leaves immediately after savasana, before the rest of us have fully returned to consciousness.
I suspect she knows similar things about me.
We have smiled at each other hundreds of times. We may once have discussed the temperature of the room. This is the sort of intimacy upon which entire midlife relationships are built.
She is not my friend. But she is no longer a stranger.
She belongs to a category of people who exist in only one part of our lives.
The woman from yoga. The man who walks the golden retriever past your house every morning. The person at the coffee shop who knows your order but possibly not your name. The neighbour whose dog you know by name, although you have now spoken to the neighbour too many times to ask for hers.
These people form the quiet supporting cast of a life. They do not appear in photographs. They are not invited to dinner. They would not be listed as emergency contacts.
They know almost nothing about us, but they know it with remarkable specificity.
The barista knows that you want the drink extra hot. The receptionist at the dentist knows that Tuesday mornings are best. The woman at the dry cleaner knows that you always forget the little paper ticket. The person who sits near you at yoga knows that your left leg is significantly less cooperative than your right.
They know the version of you who exists in that place. The yoga-class version. The dog-walking version. The woman-buying-coffee-at-7:42 version.
This may be part of their charm. They do not require the full story.
You do not need to explain your childhood, your career or the complicated thing happening in your family. They have no opinion about the decision you made ten years ago. They do not remember your regrettable haircut.
You simply arrive. They look up and recognize you.
There is something deeply reassuring about being recognized without having to be known.
A friend may ask how you are and expect an answer. The man with the golden retriever merely nods, which is often exactly the amount of emotional inquiry one can manage before eight in the morning.
These relationships are built almost entirely from repetition.
You stand beside the same person at the school gate. You attend the same Saturday tennis clinic. At first, you do not notice each other. Then you recognize each other. Then one of you makes a small comment about the weather, which in Canada constitutes a formal introduction.
Eventually, an absence is noticed.
The usual cashier is not there. The woman’s yoga mat has not appeared in its usual place. You have not seen the golden retriever for several mornings.
At first, you assume scheduling. Then vacation. After a while, you begin to wonder.
But there is often no one to ask. You do not have a phone number. You cannot send a message saying, “Hello, we have never exchanged surnames, but you have not occupied the front-left corner of Tuesday yoga for three weeks and I am becoming concerned.”
The relationship has offered familiarity without access.
When someone disappears from the small place where you know them, they may disappear completely.
Years ago, I regularly saw the same man at a coffee shop. He arrived early, sat at the same table and read the newspaper from beginning to end. We occasionally nodded. Once, when the shop was crowded, he moved his coat so I could sit nearby.
Then he stopped coming.
I still do not know why. He may have moved. He may have found a better coffee shop. He may have decided the coffee was no longer a vice he fed, which would not have been an unreasonable position.
But his empty table changed the room.
That is the strange thing about these almost-relationships. They seem inconsequential until they are gone.
We tend to describe a meaningful life through its primary cast: partners, children, parents, closest friends. These are the people who shape our decisions, carry our history and receive phone calls containing the phrase, “You will not believe what just happened.”
But much of daily life happens outside those relationships.
It happens among people whose last names we do not know. The pharmacist. The mail carrier. The woman at the front desk. The man two treadmills over. The person who always arrives at tennis just as you are leaving.
They provide a kind of social stitching. Tiny points of connection that hold ordinary days together.
Psychologists probably have a term for this. I prefer “people I would miss despite being unable to locate them.”
I sometimes think I should make more of these relationships. Introduce myself properly. Learn the neighbour’s name rather than continuing to construct increasingly elaborate sentences designed to avoid using it. “How nice to see you” can only carry a relationship for so many years.
Perhaps this is still my mother’s voice I hear in my six-year-old ear saying, “Just go say hi,” and nudging my back.
But perhaps these connections are complete as they are.
Not every person who matters to us must become a friend. Not every relationship needs to progress, deepen or acquire a group chat.
Some people are meant to know us lightly. They witness one small, recurring piece of our lives. They notice when we change our hair, miss a week or order something different. They offer a smile, a nod, perhaps one sentence about the rain.
Then one day, one of us changes classes, moves neighbourhoods or starts buying coffee somewhere else.
There is no goodbye because there was never quite a hello.
The next person takes our place on the mat, in the line or at the table.
And somewhere, for at least a little while, someone may wonder where we went.
~ Danielle