Lisa Marie Presley grew up as Elvis Presley’s one and only child. Then, at 40, she found herself with two babies at the same time.
Lisa Marie was born on Feb 1, 1968. In October 2008 she gave birth to twin girls, Harper and Finley. Their dad is her fourth husband, guitarist Michael Lockwood.
The twins joined a family that already had two older kids, Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough. That made four children, and Lisa Marie said she could sense a little of Elvis in every one of them.
“I think his spirit lives in his grandchildren,” she said in a 2012 interview. “They’ve all got a little bit of him in them.” And then: “They all have their own little traits, and I can just sense it, you know?”
That same year, she sat down with Cameron Mathison of ABC News. It was a big day for her. She was opening a personal exhibit at Graceland called “Elvis Through His Daughter’s Eyes,” filled with pieces of her own childhood, including her little rocking chair, her playthings and a look into her childhood closet.
But when the talk turned to Harper and Finley, who were 3 at the time, she was all mom.
“They’re my entire focus,” she said.
This report from the exhibit’s opening takes you back to that day at Graceland, when Lisa Marie shared the things she kept from growing up as Elvis’s little girl.
Lisa Marie opens her Graceland exhibit in 2012
So what’s it really like raising two toddlers at once? Anyone who has done it, or helped a daughter do it, knows the honest answer is a happy blur.
Lisa Marie didn’t make a long speech about it. She had one simple trick.
“It’s just that you kind of learn how to think double,” she said.
Then she acted it out. She described checking on one little girl and turning straight to the other one: “‘OK, she’s good, now what about her?'”
Every mom of two little ones has lived that exact moment, probably a dozen times before lunch. You get one settled, and the other one needs you. You find one sock, and now you’re hunting for the second. As Lisa Marie put it, “everything’s double.”
She wasn’t complaining, either. She sounded proud and a little amused, the way moms do when they talk about the chaos they secretly love. She even joked that “they’re already ruling the world, the two of them.”
If you want to see a little of that “think double” life for real, here’s a short clip of Lisa Marie out at the Ventura County Fair with the girls.
Lisa Marie with Harper and Finley at the fair
It’s a sweet thing to think about. The girl who once had that little rocking chair at Graceland grew up to spend her own days doing the double-check dance with two of Elvis’s granddaughters.
Those little girls grew up fast. Harper and Finley turned 18 last month.
The toddlers who kept their mom glancing from one to the other are young women now. And somewhere in those years of thinking double, Lisa Marie still found time to call them her entire focus.