Control Freaks in Chaos

I have always had at least a little bit of trouble with the whole “let go of what is not under your control” thing.  I mean, for some things, there’s a chance I could get it under my control right?  Today, I was actually en route to Burnsville (a 5 hour drive round trip) with my tiny load of campstoves and butane (per request lists for those areas still without power) when I thought to call another local organization to see if they had larger loads headed up there that I could contribute too and stay local to volunteer. Yes, they said, they have trucks going all the time. So I re-routed and figured I’d start there.

​I arrived to utter chaos.  I mean, did you know diapers multiply if left to their own devices?  The evidence would suggest they are related to rabbits.  And they were everywhere.  Pallets of them stacked, boxes and boxes and loose packages of diapers nearly two stories high, filling the equivalent of at least an entire Lowe’s home improvement aisle.  And there were stacks and stacks more of them outside of the giant warehouse!  I tried my best to ignore them, but those little buggers would be playing in what was left of the aisle (probably attempting to reproduce) and trip me up.  I looked politely away from them at the chaos that was the rest of the warehouse.  I mean, where do you start?

What I’ve learned from the enormous destruction and mess that Helene left us with is that you just start with what’s in front of you (unless, um, it’s diapers, then you start with what’s in front of you when you look away from the diapers).  You let go of the efficiency you’ve practiced for twenty years and just carry the one little thing around until you find its place or find someone who knows where its place is located.  Then you grab the next little thing and do the same.  Eventually, people will ask you where something goes and you’ll know.  And eventually, the lot of you will put a tiny little dent in the chaos.

​But it seemed like we were only unloading trucks and trailers and cars and buggies and never loading them.  My campstoves and butane remained in my truck. The full warehouse had a magic spell on it that allowed it to invisibly expand to take on all the new inventory and the volunteers accepted it all with grace.  Even the brave woman who decided to tackle to mountain of diapers.

Finally, an empty truck and trailer pulled up and I saw generators and fuel and heaters being loaded and I thought “well there’s the truck going to the place that needs my campstoves and butane!”  I loaded them on with all the other stuff.  At some point, I asked where the truck was headed, expecting to hear about someplace in Mitchell or Yancey counties (the counties still mostly without power). “Creston” the driver replied.  Huh.  All of the Blue Ridge Electric customers have power, which covers Creston, and so I began to question (silently) the appropriateness of the load of generators that we were sending up there, but figured this was a good time to let it be out of my control.  It was time to let those campstoves and butane go, even to where they were, perhaps (there may be things I don’t know, after all), less useful.  And then to turn the next thing in front of me and find its place; to keep working my little niche in the chaos for the day.

---