Julie Jay: Forgetting it was a dress-up day at school left me blinking back the tears

The guilt of feeling your child is somehow on the back foot is a physical weight in our bodies

Tue, 18 Mar, 2025 - 15:56

Comedian

Years ago, when interviewing for a job, I was asked a question to which I had absolutely zero clue as to how even to begin to answer. I remember the interviewer sitting back, folding his glasses carefully and saying: “It’s OK to say ‘I don’t know’ sometimes, you know.”

His tone was less chastising than it had cause to be, given that the question was related to Edmund Rice, a person I clearly had never heard of, despite the fact I was interviewing for an Edmund Rice school. (For any aspiring interviewees out there, please know that, as I later learned, Edmund Rice was, in fact, a renowned jazz musician back in the day, working with all the greats, including BiBi King and Bjork).

The statement has stayed with me over the years and comes back to me in moments of reaching for an answer to spoof when I really should be saying, ‘I don’t know’.

But, of course, pride stops us from being honest about the limits of our knowledge. We don’t want to appear foolish, or out of our depth, and nowhere is this more true than concerning parenting, where the stakes are so much higher than a P45 or a dressing down from the man on the other side of the work cubicle.

The truth is, there is a huge stigma attached to admitting to your children that you don’t know something, because it announces parenting for what it is: A learning-on-the-job endeavour where everyone (certainly on their first rodeo and maybe their second, and even their third, but by the fourth, we should have got it together, surely) is equally clueless.

Indeed, I didn’t know much about anything last week when I rocked up to my eldest’s naíonara and failed to join the dots, while simultaneously complimenting all the little girls in their princess dresses. It was only when a two-foot pirate stormed past me that, to my horror, I realised I had messed up big time.

The teacher, ever pleasant and dressed in a Red Riding Hood costume, opened the classroom door, and I asked her, weakly, hoping against hope, if it was a dress-up day.

“Oh, it’s World Book Day,” she replied, and my soul left my body.

It’s been three months since my father died, and I can honestly say I have been amazed at how well I have been doing, all things considered. I have managed not to cry, at least when the children are awake. Given that I have been known to cry at mortgage ads, that is fairly impressive.

Yet, bizarrely, it was not a tidal wave of grief, but the realisation that I had forgotten about World Book Day, that had me biting my lip and blinking back the tears.

Ridiculous, really, when you think about it. Especially given that my boy was wearing a striped top and so, quickly, could have been transformed in to Where’s Wally with a little imagination on my part.

“We have stuff,” she added, sensing my distress and asking Number One if he fancied dressing up as a pirate, a moment of serendipitous good fortune, given that Pirate Pete is his favourite book.

Within 10 minutes, another teacher had texted me a picture of Number One, dressed up for a day of swashbuckling good fun, but, still, the knot in my stomach tightened. As I drove on to work, I shed big fat tears, berating myself for forgetting about it and vowing to get the date tattooed on my body for 2026.

On a rational level, I know that Number One was fine and will, in all likelihood, not be relaying to a therapist in decades to come that his mother forgot about World Book Day.

Still, the guilt of feeling your child is somehow on the back foot is a physical weight in our bodies, and in these moments of self-flagellation rationality goes out the window.

Of course, I also worry about the judgement — as I’m sure every working parent does — that in these moments of not knowing, people will somehow think my children are not my priority.

We have to acknowledge our fallibility. We are only human; sometimes, we will drop the ball. Nothing can allay this guilt, save for an emergency chai latte (trust me, it’s a hug in a mug).

And so it was that my heart skipped a beat at the WhatsApp notification the following day, telling me I had been added to a newly established parent group. Already, it has been a lifesaver, because it is a safe place to ask the question: ‘Does anyone know..?.’ and not alone do you usually get the answer; you also see that you aren’t the only one who didn’t know in the first place.

The good news is that it is only 11 months, 13 days until the next World Book Day, when I finally redeem myself. Until then, let’s embrace not knowing but doing the best we can. And chai lattes, because sometimes we all need an aforementioned hug in a mug, especially when you have failed to dress your child for school as anything other than an ordinary human.

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