Woman 6

The plan had been that this was going to be a lesson in driving the tractor. At least that was the plan.

"How should I dress?" she had asked.

"Oh, just dress like a farm girl learning to drive a tractor," I answered, momentarily forgetting that this "farm girl" from Saigon had zero experience with tractors and had probably never looked closely at one actually being a tractor. There were no tractors where she grew up; only oxen.

When we met, it was not what I had expected, but I took it as being far better than I had hoped for. The results were photographically creative, if not terribly practical for the work involved. Her preparations did make for better photos, however.

It was tough, but I worked with the subject I had.

After fifty or so shots, Miss was climbing all over the tractor and offering many photo ops. Nicely done, too! Even in direct sunlight and no equipment but the bare-bones Nikon D70, Miss was a perfect subject.

While watching my model through the lens of the Nikon, I made a mental note that someday I was going to write a story about how the very young woman got from rural North Vietnam, via Saigon, to the the tractor in rural SC. It takes a stretch of the imagination to make up plausibly logical events to connect then to now.

The tractor never got started. We saved that for another day.

"Why do you call me 'Miss' all the time?" she asked; one of the few direct questions of a personal nature I had heard from her.

"Because you are a Miss and because I...", went brain dead, actually. I didn't know why I didn't use her name, other than It just didn't feel right for her. Nothing I could articulate, but something to do with it making the photography more personal.

"You need another name, then?"

"How many do you have?"

"Enough. It depends on who and when they met me."

"What would you like for me to call you?" I asked.

"My best friends in school called me 'Jade.' "

That works between us, and that is also when we became friends.

^{All the photographs were made by me, and I retain all rights. Permission to enjoy them is freely given.}