Julie Jay: Sometimes you really should talk to strangers

Last week, I encountered not one but three very kind people, which surely confirms Ireland as the most friendly place on Earth. Picture: iStock 

At one one point in one of Tennessee Williams’ most famous plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, the character Blanche DuBois utters the tragic final line: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The longer I spend in this parenting game, the more I understand exactly what she was talking about.

On the hard days, it is often strangers who offer you the most unexpected but necessary support. A passing word from a passerby can make or break you on a morning where everything has gone awry. 

Last week, I encountered not one but three very kind people, which surely confirms Ireland as the most friendly place on Earth. That, and our love of thanking bus drivers, which no other nationality has done in the history of the world, ever.

The first incident came when I tried to take the kids for food and minus any sort of real plan as to how we were going to get through it all, save for the Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol magazines I had bought at €10 a pop. Honestly, though I never did smoke, I am considering taking it up, because a packet of cigarettes would be cheaper.

I hadn’t planned to take them for dinner. However, after Number One’s dental appointment in downtown Tralee, I was buoyed by an inexplicable belief I could somehow pull it off.

But an attempt at a meal was just that, an attempt, and while the staff at The Grand Hotel in Tralee went above and beyond to help me and ensure Mammy could get through her own dinner without it getting stuck in her oesophagus, I eventually had to admit defeat when the two-and-a-half-year-old insisted on acting like a two-and-a-half-year-old.

As I rescued a glass from getting knocked over by Number Two, a passing lady saw me, in that moment, and made a point of telling me the most magical of sentences: “Oh, aren’t they wonderful? Such good boys and so disciplined.”

This woman had no real evidence to support this, certainly in the case of Number Two, who was eating my receipt and jumping up and down on his seat at the time, but, again, as she walked out the door, I’d swear she winked at me.

Leaving, one of the staff managers handed me my dinner in a takeaway bag and stated with conviction: “We will see you again, don’t worry.” It was all I took not to cry at the small but definite subtext of it: Don’t worry, you will try this again and next time it’ll be easier.

Forget people being rude to you — as an Irish person of a certain vintage, I can categorically say it’s the people being kind to you who will push us all over the emotional edge completely.

The second moment came a few days later when I found myself in a swimming pool in Oranmore, Galway — I wasn’t lost, I promise, I had intended to end up there but, again, you wouldn’t have thought this from my disorganised packing. 

As I rifled through the gym bag searching for my own knickers while simultaneously attempting to keep the two small people in check, I found myself having to make a call between sparing my blushes and catching Number Two before he treated himself to a fully clothed shower.

Dropping the towel and making a run for it, my voice was recognised by a listener of my podcast, Venting. 

Yes, it turns out I have at least one listener in Galway. Her name was Miriam and, in a moment of true altruism, she volunteered to entertain the two while I put something on my bum. Of course, she could have been volunteering to do so purely because my bum to the wind was making her uncomfortable but, either way, it allowed me to put not one but two socks on. 

She even offered to watch them if I wanted to dry my hair but I didn’t want to take too much advantage of her kindness, especially because the only thing that winds my youngest up more than a packet of Skittles is a hairdryer.

She told me about how she is the mammy of four, and could remember well the trips to the pool with two children under one arm and the other directing proceedings. I marvelled at her courage — I had only ended up in this scenario because my two had refused to go to the dressing room with Daddy but she didn’t bat an eyelid. “You just get on with it, don’t you?” she said. 

And, with that, our interaction ended, leaving me to think about this stranger’s good deed for the next six or seven years.

Whether it is offering words of encouragement in a busy hotel restaurant or offering to keep an eye on small children to allow a mammy to get ready, please just know that these words mean so much to any parent in the thick of it. 

In these momentary exchanges, you are simultaneously saying, ‘I see you,’ and, ‘You’re doing fine.’ Mostly, though, those knowing nods, smiles, and winks are telling us that they’ve been there too and they’re out the other side.

It’s such a beautiful thing, I might even write a play about it. Move over in the bed, Tennessee Williams, there’s a new revolutionary playwright in town.