Age and Birthday: 28; December 16, 1979
Personality: Everything that Elizabeth Teagan Fitzpatrick is and aspires to be is defined by her family. Falling only slightly short of being “everything to everyone”, Lizzy is often known to take on the roll of mediator and mentor among the family members. Gleaning a fierce work ethic from her father and an unmeasured nurturing streak from her mother, she loves and defends her siblings to the point of occasional and unintentional bossiness. Her father taught her that nothing good is achieved without hard work. Her mother taught her that nothing good happens without a dream. She places high demands on herself and on others, but provides the good nature and support needed to keep things on track. Driven by a desire to do right by her family name, she’s professionally focused on reaching the top of New York’s architects’ field while still maintaining close ties to her roots. All of this has been at the expense of love life and many friendships outside of her family, but she’d never admit to noticing that anything is missing. She’s just stubborn that way.
Appearance: A rough tumble tomboy grown up into a strong woman, Lizzy is known for jeans and t-shirts on the weekends and power suits Monday thru Friday. You’d be hard-pressed to find her in a dress away from Sunday Mass. Finally having listened her mother, she learned to “act like a lady” in her early 20’s and maintains a put-together appearance most days of the week. She keeps a meticulously organized apartment and office and has been known to get irate when things are out of place. With long dark hair and bright blue eyes, people say she is the spitting image of her mother at the same age.
Bio:
All her life Lizzy Fitzpatrick has walked a fine line between duty and independence, loyalty and freedom, tradition and innovation, family and… everything else. The second child and first girl of an Irish-American New York family, she’s always had someone by her side to talk to, play with, and trust. The benefits of having 4 siblings around all the time far outweighed the slight drawback of being insulated from the need to build close bonds beyond her family. From the moment she could walk, she was always at her brother Brian’s side. Though they weren’t twins, the brief 11-month span between them and their tight bond often made it seem as though they were. One story their mother liked to tell was of the day that they tried to send Brian to start kindergarten without his sister. Lizzy, a child who hardly ever cried, threw a hissy fit that was still the stuff of family lore and within the week she had tested to start school a year earlier than scheduled. No one ever noticed that she was slightly younger than her classmates and it only added to people’s mistaken assumption that she and Brian Jr. were twins.
Lizzy’s relationship with her father has molded much of who she is as a woman. Being able to remember a time in life when her father actually had time to laugh and play, when she was very small and work hadn’t consumed him entirely, made her a daddy’s girl at her very core and she tried most of her life to please him and make him proud. She kept a high GPA throughout school and joined National Honors Society, National Catholic Forensics League and student council in high school. She channeled her athleticism into swimming, winning gold medals in state competition both years on the varsity swim team. She thrived on the occasional “Good job” that she got from her father.
Her mother’s demeanor bears much responsibility for how Lizzy reacts to the major relationships in her life. Lizzy learned how to bandage up wounds from all the scraped knees and elbows she brought home to her mother from the playground. “And seal it with a kiss.” It was the sure only way to make the pain go away. Though Lizzy often ignored her mother’s pleas that she behave less like her brothers more like a lady, things clicked into place during college when Lizzy started to hate makeup less and like high heels more. Her mother has always been an affectionate giver and when her father stopped receiving those affections, Lizzy noticed how much time and energy her mom spent with their family friend Uncle Sal though she never put too much thought into it. Much like her mother, Lizzy is capable of giving until there isn’t much left. When she reaches that point, she can suffer silently for long periods of time before blowing up, flying off the handle, or just disappearing from the family fold for several days at a time.
She’s always been heavily involved with her siblings from happily playing the subject of Finn’s early Polaroid pictorials to encouraging Aidan to believe that his writing was something that needed to be shared with the world. From being one of the few (but the loudest) to attend Sean’s first shows to proudly displaying one of Vonny’s paintings in her office. Finn’s twin, Aidan’s cheerleader, Sean’s buddy, Vonny’s other mother; all titles she’s as proud of as any of her own accomplishments. The love she has for her sister and brothers outweighs almost any other relationship in her life. More than once a boyfriend has walked out the door with the parting shot: “Well, I’m sorry my last name’s not Fitzpatrick.” What should have been an insult, Lizzy took as a compliment as they walked out her life. As her father often said, “Being a Fitzpatrick means something.”
While her father was busy stressing the importance of hard work as she grew, her mother was emphasizing that anything that didn’t make you happy wasn’t truly worth doing. What made truly made Lizzy happy were the days spent traveling across town and exploring all of the incredible art museums that New York City had to offer with her brother. While Brian was falling in love with photographs of gorgeous structures, Lizzy was falling in love with the idea of how they were made. She began drawing when she was young, finding a particular passion for sketching the beautiful skyline they watched from the windows of the train. She got the chance to hone her natural talent in art classes throughout her school career, but never took it for much more than a hobby until college. Initially her planned major was finance and her father greatly approved saying that she could make a great living and that Brian Jr. could learn a thing or two from her. Lizzy figured she could get used to the idea of life on Wall Street. And if it got Brian Sr. to go one day without complaining about Brian Jr., she could do it with a smile on her face. Lizzy’s only trouble with the idea of crunching numbers for the rest of her life? She hated it. She hated everything about it. And no amount of “good job’s” from Brian Sr. could make the thought of it any less dreadful. Or manage to raise her flagging GPA.
“What makes you happy, Lizzy?” Elizabeth asked her daughter one day near the end of her freshman year. Lizzy had failed another statistics exam and had come home in tears. She wanted to make her father happy, but it was making her miserable.
With the prompting of her mother’s question, Lizzy pointed to the sketches of all of New York’s historical buildings on her walls, pictures drawn by her own hand. Shortly after that moment, the course of her life was redirected and she declared a major in Architecture. Her father’s anticipated disappointment was surprising in the fact that he wasn’t disappointed in her at all. When she broke the news to him, she expected an immediate flare up, but instead he issued a lecture about high-paying investors, housing booms, rising… something or other that she missed in the midst of her sheer shock at his happiness. Soon, she was happy in school and her grades were soaring again. Design classes, both artistic and structural, sparked a passion in her that she’d never known before. She swam through her courses as easily as she once sliced through the water of Olympic-sized swimming pools; living and breathing building codes, zoning laws, and all the small parts that summed to the so much greater whole. She’d found her dream. One day people would look up at one of the city’s magnificent skyscrapers and say, “That’s a Liz Fitzpatrick building.”
Though he voiced his approval of her career path, he still poured all of himself into work. She thought he’d make more time if she was at the top of her class. Which she was, but he didn’t. She thought he’d squeeze out a minute if she just went to graduate school and interned with one of New York’s most successful architecture firms. Which she did, but still, he did. She always hoped that someday he’d stop spending all of this time working to support the family he’d made and spend some time enjoying it. But someday never came and she sat stubbornly at his hospital bedside as cancer slowly whittled away at the man who’d once seemed invincible in her eyes.
When Finn moved to Europe, Lizzy stayed in New York. She had just gotten an apprenticeship that many in her field would kill for and, though she understood Finn’s decision, it wasn’t one she could make for herself. The “twins” suffered their first real physical separation and separation anxiety hit Lizzy like a ton of bricks. She wore out her email box and phone bill keeping in touch with her brother while he was gone, and she couldn’t deny the complete relief she felt at his return in their father’s final days.
Sadly, even Finn’s return hasn’t completely put all the pieces back together. Lizzy misses Brian Sr. more than she’s willing to admit although she’s angry at him for dying before any of his children got married or had children. With her father less than a month in the ground, Elizabeth has run off to Europe with Uncle Sal. Lizzy’s never been so upset with her mother before and doesn’t know what to do with the resentment building up inside of her. On the surface, she’s holding things together and taking on the sudden role of “matriarch” with a smile. But underneath it all…
[Moved to SF, CA]