This shoot may be my least prepared session ever. To what extent? The mom-to-be didn’t even know I was going to take photos of her until the moment when I showed up and took out my camera. Well, I didn’t have a choice.
I was away from New York for two months this summer. Before I took off, for some reason Jing just didn’t think she looked pregnant enough for the photo shoot, although to me she definitely looked “super pregnant”. And then when I finally came back and checked in with her, she told me that she was almost due. So, what could I do? I paid her a visit right after, with my camera bag of course.
Understandably, as a 97% due mom-to-be, Jing had no interest in putting on makeup, no plan on changing various outfits, no spare energy to make the diaper-filled and baby proof apartment “picture-perfect”, and obviously was too heavy to move around and get some nice outdoor setting (I am actually not sure if "heavy" is accurate here, as in her own words, she felt like a "(hot) ballon" which could fly away any minute).
Okay, I will see what I can do.
At this point, it probably appears to you that I was not treating this client very “seriously”… That’s not incorrect by the common standard of seriousness. In fact, Jing has been one of my best friends since college. We took the same flight from China to the States, many many years ago, and we didn’t hate each other after that 15-hour flight, which was a good start I guess. On campus, I lived in Mary Munford #345 and she lived in #346, which was completely serendipity. We selected the classes independently but ended up having exactly the same schedule in the first semester. I understand that becoming besties requires some commonalities, not just serendipity, and we definitely had that. For example, we had similar sense of time and refused to wake up before 7:45 for the 8:00 Calculus class. Both of us appreciated the beauty of a “carefree” lifestyle and therefore remained to be the messy (but sort of clean) type. So that now whenever Blowfish, who is always driven crazy by my relatively casual housekeeping style, starts wondering how bad my dorm room was in college, my answer is always “It was better than Jing’s anyways”.
Meanwhile, we had differences: one was quite fashion-forward while the other had absolutely no sense of that; one could understand the classes without any difficulty while the other couldn’t really take decent notes in the first three months; one made friends and became known quite quickly while the other struggled quite a bit and remained “low-key” (not purposely of course) for a while… I am not gonna tell you which is which but if you know her (and/or me) and can’t tell, you have a problem. Luckily those “differences” didn’t set us apart. She was my private English tutor for all the things I felt too embarrassed to ask; she lent me the notes after class although I actually ended up getting better grades (ha!). She failed miserably to help me become “popular” in college but let me third-wheel her relationship for a few years, until one day, I finally realized that I really didn’t have to accept their “courtesy invite” to the dinner every Friday…
Sometimes I get really jealous when I hear people telling their crazy college time stories. I feel FOMO that I was almost “too normal” in college and never did anything that crossed the line, even just a bit. Now, I could actually think of one, with Jing of course, when we were both working as part-time shelvers at the school library. We two always signed up for the same shifts. I was usually the one shelving the newspapers and magazines while Jing was the one shelving the books back to a very old section of the library. One day, when I smuggled a gossip magazine for her during the shelving break, we both noticed that almost empty book cart, which could actually fit one person in… We looked at each other. After a second of hesitation, I jumped in. Then she started pushing the cart, faster and faster and faster, along the aisles in the dimly-lit library where people rarely visited (thank goodness)… And I think you’ve got that picture in your head. My only wish at this moment is our library supervisor then is not reading this blog.
As I have grown older, I have learned to appreciate and cherish more some “old stuff”: that pair of old flats which I keep wearing when I want to be a bit easier on myself; that old pen with which I know my thoughts will flow out like the rain in the summer; that old friend in front whom I will never be afraid of embarrassing myself.
On the weekends during college, Jing and I visited the most famous shopping mall in town at that time, called the Fashion Square, quite often. One day in the Foot Locker, we saw a pair of super cute tiny baby sneakers. We loved it so much that we promised each other: whoever has kids first in the future, will get that pair of shoes as a gift from the other. So guys - I gotta stop here. I have some new stuff to buy, for some dear old friend.