I’m not sure who Maria is smiling at in this photo, her own reflection in the mirror, or me, looming behind her with my camera. I took this photo as we arrived in our slightly seedy motel in Vermont during a nasty, dark storm. We were very happy to be there together.

It was a getaway, and a getaway is different from a vacation. The definition of a “getaway,” is an escape or quick departure, especially after committing a crime. There is something illicit about a “getaway” as opposed to a simple trip, and to me the word has a romantic connotation, doing something vaguely illicit together.

People like us take vacations, Bonnie and Clyde stage “getaways,” so maybe that’s what made it so much fun, the sense of escape, the idea we were being somehow bad together. It is romantic, that. I could see from Maria’s face in the mirror how happy she was to be there, so was I.

We both are workaholics, and our very survival depends on our working most, if not all, of the time. To stop working in the middle of the week and run off to some old world motel is, to us, illicit. We kept asking ourselves, “is this okay to do?, should we be working?”

And the answer kept being yes, we should be there, it is okay to stop working once in awhile, it is okay to live, to vote for romance and escape, for El  Feja, the Getaway. One of the prophets in the Kabbalah wrote that people are dead for a long time, they ought to make sure to have some fun while they are here and to keep the troubles of the world in perspective.