Jeannie Brown

Some people have the misfortune of never knowing their mother; I had the extreme fortune of having two mothers. Jeannie and my mom each gave birth to a son three days apart, and were living together within a week of our births. I do not remember a point in my life where I did not know Jeannie. When my mom had tried to assign me a Sign name/name-sign that was too close to a derogatory term, Jeannie put the kibosh on that and assigned me another. When we were young we’d have photoshoots, likely at the Olan Mills in the Old Mill Pond, where Nathan and I were dressed to match. I would spend fun days with Nathan and Jeannie—and sometimes her mother, Inez—in their newer car than we had (dutifully secured by The Club and a folding sun protector in the windshield) doing things never done with my mom like going to membership stores such as FedCo and Costco or eating at Boll Weevil! When 8th grade began and my mother moved out to San Marcos, Jeanie was kind enough to let me come live at her place so that I could have some school continuity. What I got out of the experience was so much more. Jeannie had AOL before my mom got Prodigy internet. There were not three other siblings plus foster kids to compete with for attention, and while Nathan and I thought we got away with late nights of listening to music, and playing Yahoo! Pool, and Need for Speed because Jeannie was Deaf, she probably was fully aware of what we were doing just chose to let us get away with hanging out because she valued social interaction. Nathan, she and I would play Egyptian Ratscrew and other card games with regularity using grifted card shufflers, while distracting one another with toe-pinches. As we got older and started venturing out with a little more independence we would use TTY to place free calls when we were ready to be picked up from a mall or movie theater, and Jeannie would come to collect us while I’m sure my mother would’ve told us to walk! Once, when we found an old newspaper article from a Denver paper in which she was photographed and quoted saying “I just don’t give a damn” she shared about her upbringing. Occasionally she would allow us to request certain words she said in a unique way that made us all laugh. Herself included. There were days I’m sure I was a burden. I easily doubled the cans of Wild Cherry Pepsi or Dr. Pepper Nathan went through, and required the use of a second box of Hamburger Helper and more ground beef…but I never felt unwelcome. We would go out to coffee nights with Signs of Silence, a Deaf Community to which Jeannie belonged, or spend hours at their San Marcos office while Jeannie volunteered. She would pick up different kids and give them rides to these events. Nathan and I made friends, spent hours playing billiards, and occasionally taught ourselves to drive stick on some quasi-authorized joy rides in Roy’s car. For a while I’m sure my ASL was rather good. It was at their place that Nathan and I blew up M80s in his glasses cases, there that my front tooth got chipped by a skittle (which made her laugh quite a bit), there that I was the morning of 9/11, and countless other memories. Jeannie wrote notes to the school excusing absences and lateness, often served as a buffer between my mother and I when necessary, and eventually gave in to buying us Mike’s Hard Lemonades and other spiked beverages when pestered her enough. She got Nathan and I RIM messengers (the predecessor company to Blackberry) and Nathan and I would message one another from different classes across our high school campuses with devices the school couldn’t take away because our mom was Deaf. We would also message her…at that point who else could we message? All of our other friends were in school! Because of this we could keep chatting even when I was not living with them, and it was easy to maintain that relationship when I moved out to the DC area at 17. I only came back to California every few years or so, and Nathan and I would go pick her up and head to In-N-Out or some other place for a meal and a visit. Her Sign name for so long had been J.B., and I remember her distancing herself from that. She just wanted to be Jeannie. She was still growing and forging new relationships, and proud of Nathan, and excited about her grand kids. She constantly asked about the trips my wife and I took, and we messaged one another on birthdays, mother’s day, or on random occasions when she found an old photo she wanted to share. It was a great pleasure that she made the flight out to Maryland for my wedding in 2015. As my trips out to California became more centered around work, Nathan and I would sneak n a few beers and video games between 11pm and 1am before crashing and heading back to work the next day. Seeing either of my mothers, sadly, became less of a priority. But even just going through some of our FB conversations now is like a warm hug. She was loved and will be missed terribly. I’ll try to pull out some photos in the coming days and weeks to share here.