My name is Jean B. Cooper, and I am a writer. The tinted photograph is of my beautiful mother. When her photo was made, she was a teen-ager, so it’s from the 1930’s. I’ve always loved that picture of her, and now that she is in a nursing home and suffering from senile dementia, I love the picture even more. Mother does not recognize me or my two older brothers. While that development is tough to accept, we are heartened by her joy. She is happy in her own world which her mind creates for her. Aside from intermittent anxieties over some children (we don’t know whose – is it us, her younger sisters, or phantoms of dementia?), she laughs, makes jokes with her caretakers, and may even display her contrariness. We are blessed to have her and to have her wry wit. She said to me a couple of years ago, “Jean, I’ve got news for you: I’m going to live a long time.” And then she lifted her shoulders and giggled. That’s my mom, whom I call A.J., and she just had her 95th birthday. Give’em hell, sister.
So, yes, I’m a writer. One of my stories won an Edgar award. A.J. read it, and said it was pretty good, but it was “dirty.” The story had been pub’d in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, so there’s no way it was dirty, okay? That’s just Mother talking. She was, I concede, baptized in a creek in 1936, which can dampen your way of thinking. Still, she might have said congratulations or something. Not her way. She’s more the “pretty is as pretty does” critic. She’s succinct. She can pith all over you, and smile doing it. Ah…God love her.
The following is a list of awards I received (nothing dirty):
- Edgar Award for Best Short Story
- Anthony Award Finalist For Best Short Story
- Winner of The South Carolina Collection , a Fiction Competition Sponsored by The South Carolina Writers’ Workshop, Inc.
- Winner in the South Carolina Fiction Project
- Winner of the New Voices Play Competition
- Winner of the South Carolina Humanities Council Play Competition
There’s some other stuff, but if A.J. were looking over my shoulder now she’d say, “Well, who died and made you queen?”
Jean B. Cooper