People Rooting for You

Earlier this year, my partner went to a family function with one of his best friends. He was catching up with his friend’s family members, some of which he hadn’t seen in years. He also told me about talking to a kid in elementary school, someone’s nephew or cousin or so, who he hadn’t previously known. He told me about how smart and cool the kid was and told me “oh this kid is going to go far.”

It all sounded very charming and wholesome and I found myself drawn to this idea of the people that come into our lives—sometimes for only an afternoon. Sometimes to be revisited a decade later.

It also made me wonder who might have thought that about me as a child. The “going far” thing.

If we’re lucky, we have loving family and friends who encourage us in our dreams. If we’re really lucky we get teachers and mentors and coaches who believe in us and who make us feel like we can do anything. 

But then there are people who we meet maybe once. Who we may never cross paths with again. Who may, somehow, somewhere, still wish us the best. 

Perhaps there are more people rooting for us than we think.

In sitting with this idea, I wondered how realistic it was. Could I call back people I’d spent an hour with a decade ago and wish them well?

I am 12 or 13 and have just started babysitting a 5-year-old while his mother works from home. During the summer, I will bake cookies and play board games and run in the backyard with my high energy friend. A year or two later, the family moves and I lose contact. I am 30 and while I assume this “kid” in his early twenties no longer loves Thomas the Tank Engine, I am hoping there is something in his world that makes him feel like a child again.

I am 15 or 16 and on an Amtrak train from Iowa to Pennsylvania having just spent some time with my brother. My mom is reading a magazine but the lines on the page make me dizzy so I’ve relocated to daydream in the scenic car. I meet someone who has just run a marathon in California and is taking a train across the entire country, back to his home on the east coast. I am deeply involved in distance running (though almost a full decade from running my first marathon). We talk about running and the race and what it’s been like to see the length of the United States through a streaky window. I am 30 and hoping he still finds joy in running and train travel.

I am 20 and working at an assisted living facility for people with dementia and Alzheimers. Most evenings, after dinner, a group of women comes out to the lobby and together, with one of their daughters, we play cards and gossip. I know my residents, but I also am learning their family. I’m in love with the community and even though many of my residents have since passed, I am 30 and thinking of the young family members I met there, the staff that shared kindness so graciously. I hope they know the difference they made. 

I am 24 and driving across the United States. Someone at the town square has explained that we don’t have to pay for parking on the weekend. Later, after spending time with their friends, they take us to the best hole-in-the-wall spot in town for lunch. I am 25 or 26 and have crashed very badly on my rollerblades. Someone makes sure I am okay. I am nearly 28 and someone has let me stay in their apartment in between leases. I am 30 and cheering for them. All of them. All of them, everywhere. 

Certainly, certainly there are more people rooting for us than we think.