Packing for 48 Hours*

Right away, I realized that my backpack was too heavy.

I packed tweezers. This isn’t important because tweezers are heavy but because packing tweezers is indicative of the level of mishap I saw ahead.

Someone could get a sliver. I could get a sliver. And without tweezers what would I do? I had thought briefly about bringing a needle because, ultimately, that’s what’s needed to extract a sliver, but that thinking led to a search for my tiny sewing kit which I might need if, you know, the button on my Levi’s anchored with one- hundred-years-of-buttons-never-falling -off thread comes loose leaving me with having to hitch up my pants while carrying my too heavy pack on my back and blue sleeping bag with one hand. I did have a free hand so it could’ve been done.

I packed a camping towel, mascara, blush, an enormous number of hearing aid batteries, a Boy Scout knife, matches, two pairs of socks, soap, three menstrual pads (I’m 30 years past that point but had conjured kind of a wacky scheme in case of, never mind), alcohol wipes, “adult washcloths,” seven Band-aids, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, a flashlight, change purse, sunglasses, reading glasses, two packages of nuts, four turkey beef sticks, a granola bar, a package of tissues (doubling as toilet paper), two string cheeses, a charger, two charging cords, an extra large (filled) water bottle, and my Kindle. Oh, and my winter parka, the heavy brown one with the fur ruff. Yes, I took that as well. And new, very thick mittens, almost forgot those.

I won’t even talk about how many layers of clothing I was wearing.

Super prepared.

Not really. I never stopped to think about how far I’d have to carry all that stuff – the crammed backpack and a sleeping bag. Yesterday, I walked four and a half miles.

For years, I’ve seen homeless people with their backpacks. In fact, it’s probably the quickest way to spot someone who’s homeless because most adults don’t walk around town with backpacks. I get it now. The homeless backpackers need to have all the stuff that makes them feel okay and prepared, who have to have that metaphoric pair of tweezers just in case. What they have is on their backs. It is everything. And it is heavy. Man, did that ever sink in – hard – while I was walking to the next bus stop, to the meal program, to where we were going to sleep. And it was heavy, in all ways heavy.

The regular me, the one not pretending to be homeless for a weekend, leaves the house with a phone, a twenty dollar bill, and a credit card. I am free, mobile, unburdened.

This is one of 10,000 things I realized from two days being homeless.

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*48 Hours of Homelessness is the annual fundraiser for Street Angels, a Milwaukee homeless outreach organization. I’m the president of the board of directors and a long time volunteer/advocate. This year, I participated along with five other people in ‘being homeless’ from Friday to Sunday night. I will be writing about this experience intermittently over the next several weeks.