Embracing the love of Eris...
Long ago, when Spouse and I moved in together, we had to come up with a name for our household. All of our friends had names for their places/groups and it makes it much simpler to say, “We're going to the Zone/ the Hus/ the Dorm this weekend” rather than saying, “We're going to see Bob, Jane, and Mary-anne's place” or “We're headed to Louisville to see all that crew.” I asked her what we should call our place and she didn't even pause before answering “Chaos House” and such we have been ever since.
This might imply that we are some kind of wild party house. We are not. We will occasionally have one or two guests or let friends crash when they're in town, but we don't do events at home and we are not heavily into socializing in person (even before Covid made this en vogue). It's really just that there is always something going on and the zaniest things happen at any moment. We can plan for X and suddenly be sideswiped by A-Q, and we roll with it.
We make plans with the full knowledge that something weird will happen and we'll adjust on the fly. Once we were planning for a quiet weekend at home when word came to us that the friend of a friend had broken his leg while traveling and was in the hospital near us. His wife was stranded at the hospital because she didn't drive. Her family and infant were three hours away and she was a little stressed.
We got some mutual friends to pick her up at the hospital and meet us for a meal in a diner where we all sat around, ate, and got introduced. Then we invited her home with us. She felt comfortable enough to accept.
At home, we set her up with a laptop that had a free interface and internet connection. We got her a glass of wine and placed a cuddly cat nearby. We set up a bed for her and clean towels and comfort stuff for her. We clued her in on the weird things about our old house. And then we let her be. We'd made space in the common room, but also space in a solitary room. Then we didn't bug her. We made sure she had power, signal, and access to food and cleaning stuff, and then let her be.
Over the next week we'd get her to hospital to see her husband and took her places she needed to go while accepting her as one of us. She pitched in and did cleaning, but we didn't ask. She shared conversation with us, but neither she nor we felt obligated to entertain each other.
When she had things organized with her family and had the resources, she moved on and lived her life happily. Some years later, she and her husband came out to our place and she cooked AMAZING food while he helped me replace a roof.
This is not a brag on how cool we are for helping out a stranger and making a friend. Almost anybody would have done the same thing if a similar situation arose. They have.* That's how we learned that this is what we do. This is an example of how affinity groups can provide mutual aid in real time. It's an example of how chaos is the thing that brings us opportunities to be engaged with the world around us.
When our expectations are locked in stone, it's really hard to adjust to the unexpected events that will happen. This means that trying to live in a constant state of expectation will inhibit response in an emergent situation. If we expect things to go as planned, we will feel resistance against disruptions. If we expect things to be disrupted, we will become hypervigilant and not be fully present to the joys of any given moment; in time this will leave us less effective when emergent situations evolve.
I am presently writing this while P (my late-stage Alzheimer's mother/child) is resting after getting cleaned up and changed into clean diaper and clothes and my rambunctious puppy is sprawled out on his back in the boneless sleep of the very young. I can hear the washer in the spin cycle as I clean up the latest round of towels and washable bed pads. Soon I will make food for me and Spouse. Soon I will start some beans in the pressure cooker so that there will be soup for supper. Soon I will drink some more water and take my mid-day meds.
I know that at any moment P may call me, the puppy will wake and pull the plug out of this laptop, Spouse will send a pathetic and starving message, or the washer may become unbalanced and start dancing around the room. That's okay. I'm not poised and fearful of those events. Should they happen I will not be resentful of the disruption.
The love of Eris is not that things will always be wacky and wild. The love of Eris is feeling in my bones that order and disorder are the heart of chaos. I don't know what will happen next so I will remain alert and ready without sacrificing this moment for a moment that has not yet emerged. I am engrossed in assaying the ore of my memories and seeing what events can serve as ore to refine into understanding and acceptance. I can do that while changing P, or switching the laundry over, or sorting the dry beans... but in this moment I'm typing out my thoughts and my experiences.
And now Spouse has come inside and we're going to make some lunch together. The Puppy has woken up and is looking around for a new place to nap. Spouse has a meeting at 1600, so we're going to have dinner right after that and then I plan to get up the leaves from the yard. We both know it probably won't happen exactly like that, but these are our goals for the day and we state these goals so that we have somewhere to be walking. On our walk many things will happen. Some of them will be expected, some will be novel.
Either way, it's a beautiful day at Chaos House, and we accept reality as best we can perceive it.
*The husband's half of this story involves two of our mutual EMT friends holding his leg in traction manually for 45 minutes while the ambulance was lost on the way to the accident site. Another local friend works in medical billing and he checked in to make sure that insurance was lined up properly and that funding could happen if it was needed. Four more bystanders made space around the accident and made sure that the people who helped him were competent and were not bothered by looky-loos. The EMTs followed the ambulance to the hospital and took charge of his wife and getting paperwork filled out properly and contact information in case of further need. One of the bystanders checked with a local person to see if they knew anybody who lived in the area who might be able to give support to the family beyond today.