A string of red and green colored bulbs - the plastic kind illuminated by a watch-sized battery encased in a circuit-box clasp - dangled from my neck, blinking on and off, as I jogged toward the center of town.
I sounded like a toddler running out of their bedroom toward an adult party with a Christmas toy on the fritz.
My nighttime running intention to be highly visible to traffic always gets inflated by an innate inclination towards becoming a potentially hazardous spectacle.
Maybe it was the light-up earrings, attached to the elastic straps of a face mask and tucked under the earflaps of a faux fur hat that put me on this path toward ridiculousness. But a friend bringing a stack of pajamas leftover from a family photo session last Christmas probably sent me over that edge.
"Here. Put this on," she asked politely, shoving a bright red trap-bottomed onesie in my direction. I reached out to take it, fumbling a flashlight and setting off my watch. "If we're all going out, we are going all out."
And so I did what any dutiful friend would do: I added another layer of insanity to my appearance.
Truth be told, I'd been thinking about this moment all week. Not about the outfit ... or the route, which was a nighttime tour of holiday decorations that had been mapped and cataloged by our local neighborhood association. The circuitous route would take us away from elegant loops, adding in zig-zags and even some back-tracking.
No. I was worried mostly about the wisdom of meeting as a group during a pandemic, despite being outdoors, naturally distanced by pace, and masked the entire five miles.
"Wait ... I don't remember ANYONE saying anything about five miles."
No one had "signed on" since it wasn't official. It was more like a wink and a nod with a time and a place.
The idea that "other people were doing it," as evidenced by festive photographs I'd seen running clubs post on facebonk, ran in a similarly inelegant loop in my thoughts, narrated sarcastically by my mother's voice, which was clearly mentioning something about following friends and the proximity cliffs.
No matter how we make this endeavor fit the prevailing guidance - staying outside, breaking into small groups, remaining masked and distanced the whole time - will always feel tight under the weight of the word essential.
I've done little in the last nine months that feels as essential as running alone.
No one needs to run at night with their friend who may or may not be wearing elf ears.
And yet there we were an irregular parade of moving lights headed in various directions on the same path.
A few bobbing noggins track light beams straight ahead. It relaxes me to realize I'd have to sprint to catch them. Another few keep a similar pace a half a block back.
Fifty minutes pass as quickly as the five miles of light strings, inflatable winter scenes, and sparkling paper luminaries. We all leave without hugging or even high fives and head back to the comfort of our own homes.
The elation I feel as I walk home feels like more than enough to get through the rest of this dark winter.
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