Five Daughters, Two Sets Of Twins, One Accidental Masterpiece

Picture this: the 80s, two passionate artists, deeply in love and focused on their craft, suddenly find themselves as parents to five little girls in just three and a half years. Seems like a whirlwind, right? Welcome to the world of Jennie and Joe, my parents, who took a detour from their artistic paths to navigate the chaotic symphony of parenthood. This episode is a charming snippet from my memoir, a tale of my mom, a visionary animator, and my dad, an accomplished journalist, and their unexpected journey into a bustling household of little girls.

As your host, Lucie Beatrix, I'll be weaving the story of my parents—an enchanting tale of love, art, and the surprise of parenthood. If you've ever wondered what it's like to grow up in a house filled with artists transitioning into full-time parents, this episode is for you. We'll walk through my mom's groundbreaking work in animation, my dad's captivating storytelling, and their beautiful love story that unfolds amidst this creative chaos. So, brace yourself as we journey through this fascinating narrative, exploring how my parents transitioned from being artists to the full-time job of raising five girls, and how this adventure became their accidental masterpiece.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

In this episode of the Lucy Beatrix podcast, I'm giving you a taste from my memoir because I'm writing a book, and in this piece it's going way back to the beginning days before I even came to be, and telling you guys the story of my parents. So I hope you enjoy this little taste. And part of why I'm sharing this with you, or this piece of my book, is because being a writer is a very lonely existence and I find that I spend most of my days just glued to my computer cranking away, and I want to share that process with you guys. I want to share the journey of creating and telling this story. That is my life. So I hope you enjoy. It happened so fast. It was the 80s, after all.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Two amazingly talented creatives, Jenny and Joe, who swore they'd never have kids, ended up having not just one but a whopping five all girls in three and a half years. Joseph, my father, was an accomplished journalist. Jennifer, my mother, was at the top of her career as an animator the old fashioned kind that required hundreds of hand sketched frames per second. The two of them were hardworking in their fields, sharing a deep connection rooted in art. My dad's craft was storytelling. He was writing a story for the local newspaper about the visionary behind the sports stadium scoreboard, or my mom. My mother was the first woman to dream up animations that would glow larger than life for crowds of the thousands of adoring fans when home runs were run by the baseball team the Cardinals. This innovation an animated scoreboard in the stadium was a story that my dad felt needed to be told. More importantly, he wanted to be the one to tell it, as it got him closer to my mother. It was the perfect setup.

Speaker 1: 2:07

In the process of interviewing my mom, my dad would unintentionally fall for the subject of his story, the gorgeous career woman. She wasn't exactly looking for love at the moment, as she often hunched over her glow box animating cartoons late into the night at the stadium. There she plowed through candy bars and ramen noodles to stay awake, and this sustenance is what she needed to pioneer in an industry dominated by men. Men or dating only seemed like a distraction to my mom. The story about my mother, written about my father, ran in the newspaper a few weeks later and my mom, with her feathered, ferrofaucet hair and cinched waist, appeared on the front page. Then my dad covertly asked her to accompany him on the next writing assignment. She agreed to go along with him on a restaurant review, chasing the next story, and the rest is history.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Within months, my parents walked down the aisle with close friends and family present. In those fleeting moments of childless Jenny and Joe obliviously in love, bound together with hopes of making art, my mother swore she'd never have kids. She insisted on continuing to pursue her artistic endeavors. But in the next few years my mother drifted from her craft. Suddenly she had five little screaming mouths to feed. Amongst my four siblings I was the eldest and I surpassed my little sister Lily and Grace by just 11 months and 20 days. Following in line were my sisters Celeste and Susanna, who trailed behind me by just three and a half years.

Speaker 1: 3:50

From my earliest memories, remarks were made by anyone our family encountered about how incredible it was to have five siblings, two sets of twins so close in age and, most notably, all sisters. Looking back, my parents could have broken a record in parenting or to go from casually dating artists to suddenly heading the packed household of five little children in such a short period of time. It was almost as if my sisters and I were their accidental masterpiece, their wild collection of little tornadoes that often left them scratching their heads and wondering what on earth they had gotten themselves into. As my mom's art supplies were replaced with diapers and pacifiers, my mom took on a new role a stay-at-home caretaker. Needless to say, this drastic shift in her trajectory wasn't easy. It was chaos in stereo, a symphony of diapers and colorful markers on the walls that my mom painted over with her larger-than-life, whimsical murals. Although she wasn't working like she used to, she was always busy around the house, mopping floors, folding laundry and cooking meals. Still, she insisted on making art to scratch the itch.

Speaker 1: 5:10

In our earliest memories, my sisters and I looked up at the monumental light table as my mother used ink pens to sketch and draw illustrations. The fumes from ink and paint were a comforting scent and it signaled to us our mom, in her happy place, working on something or the time. She wasn't likely to be stressed out or run down by domestic duties. She was always working on something and even produced children's books, ones that included our pets as lead characters and wrote stories to accompany them, to teach us the values of good manners and being kind. Our old farmhouse, its black and white checkered tile floors with large oriental rugs, became a fun house, an art studio and sometimes a loony bin, depending on the day. Needless to say that whatever was happening that occurred inside of our humble home, it was always a perpetual circus. The way I see it, my sisters and I were the ultimate test subjects. And what can happen when two eccentric minds come together to create a family in what seemed like overnight.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Thanks so much for listening. I'm so excited to be sharing this kind of stuff with you guys. I'm going to keep putting out little tastes of what my book is going to include in it, and I hope you can reach out to me on Instagram if you have any feedback or anything specifically that you want me to talk about. I'm at Lucy Beatrix, L-U-C-I-E, B-E-A, T-R-I-X. And until next time, just be fast, Just win.