Deirdre's Story in Portlaoise

Deirdre has been volunteering, three days a week since the store opened here in May of last year. She's happily married, with three children who are all teenagers now. She has a passion for books and reading and loves sorting through the books in the Portlaoise shop.

"If you are enjoying something you do it, and if you are a volunteer you need to enjoy it, if you’re not, then why do it.? Life’s too short, there’s enough stressful things in life. Volunteering has to add to your life. Just like a relationship, if someone doesn’t make you a better person, a happy person, then you are in the wrong relationship.It's the same thing. You are not compelled to do volunteering. In some cases, you do get something from doing something useful. They say there’s no selfless acts out there but… you have a nice feeling when you do something useful for a few hours. Even if It’s only small. I’ve helped out in the schools, parent councils, Gaelic Football Councils and stuff as well, anything to help the community out.

I didn’t know much about Oxfam before I started. There’s wasn’t a store here in Portlaoise before but I would pop in in Dublin. However, I was aware of the kind of work they did, dealing with disasters, helping women start businesses, it’s usually women who have to forge their way in life and the men are somewhere in the background. Women have to find a way to support their kids. I know the work they do around water irrigation and all that. I like the ethos of helping people to help themselves, giving people a chance, a lot of people are born into circumstances where they have no chance, no hope. I believe if the majority of people on the planet are given an opportunity to improve their lives or their children’s lives – they’ll go for it, they’ll go for it one hundred percent. No matter what culture you are born into, all people want is the best for their kids, give them every opportunity. .Whatever nationality, culture, creed, someone is.. So I think we’re all the same.

Books just keep on giving. I love to see parents come in and pick out books for their kids, I'll help them out when they can. I'm a pure believer in getting your children to read as early as they can. They need it to develop their imagination. When the kids were little I used to make up and tell them little stories - say if they were doing anything dangerous for example. I'd say things like, “well a boy in my class was walking along the wall and lost an eye” or “a girl in my class poured boiling water after herself".. awful.. And it kept going on til they figured me out eventually. Sophie would say “did everyone in your class end up in hospital? It must have been really bad, you have bad stories Mum”. But of course I made these stories as a way to protect them.

I used to tell other little porkies – one day there was a field of beige coloured charley cattle and I’d say “Dya see those cows? That’s where you get the chocolate milk from” and they were like “really?”.And I said “Yep, you can only get chocolate milk from those cows”. And the kids they totally swallowed it, it was hilarious. And then one of the other kids said “and what about strawberry milk?, are there strawberry cows?” And I said “don’t be silly, sure they add strawberry syrup to it” and she was like “Oh okay!" So innocent. You’d just make up the stories. The kids also thought I was friends with Oprah because I was in Oprah’s book club.. they’d see emails coming through and they were like “What’s this?”. And I said “Sure I’m in a book club, we’ve been emailing back and forth for years” *laughs*, they were about 9 or 10 at that time.

“I’m always kind of looking for something special. Sometimes, you’ll find old letters in the books which are lovely. I did find a letter in an old book once, someone had written it and had it addressed to a person in Canada. But there was no stamp on it and they hadn’t posted it and I had forgotten about it and left it in the book. Of course, finding these messages or letters in the books makes your imagination run wild. I’ve thought about sending on that letter alright, you never know what could happen. I don’t know what the outcome of sending on the letter could be..I wouldn’t want the burden of responsibility of possibly changing someone’s path or fate in life. I assume that person didn’t want to send the letter, maybe there was a message that was something that should be carried to the grave, maybe it’s not my place to intervene”