Ballerina Farm - lots of thoughts

Of course, Ballerina Farm isn't a new story, but there is a new twist! For those of you unfamiliar with the story as it began, a beautiful young ballerina named Hannah Wright met the handsome wealthy son of the founder of JetBlue airlines. He swept her off her feet the year she was graduating from Julliard and soon they were married and in months, she was pregnant with the first of the following NINE children.

Not daunted by this switch in the tracks, the little train that could with her "Co-founder" husband developed the Ballerina Farm business, a social media super hit with millions of followers. Hannah made everything from scratch, milked the cows, baked sourdough bread, gave birth at home with no pain relief medication, and did her fitness routine in the early hours before the children awoke. She stayed slim and beautiful and even competed in beauty contests and won Mrs. American twelve days after the birth of her eighth baby (and wore a swimsuit!).

Superwoman? Who knows. She avows her husband forvids nanny help but she does have cleaning staff and more than a hundred employees work in the business selling the farm products. Also, she has a full time teacher for her homeschooled children.

I watched a lot of short videos on YouTube, but one stuck out from the rest; Hannah was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by half of her brood of children, dressed in her Mrs. American tiara and gown. One toddler, sitting on the table was screeching (YES - SCREECHING!) for food, which Hannah patiently handed her, while another toddler in a similarly ear piercing shriek screamed for "Ba" which Hannah finally interpreted as water and gave the tot a glass of water.

Having been an older teen when my mother had her second set of three children, I was well aware of raucous demands of toddlers, their fits of temper, their full body emotional hysteria, and watching that kitchen table scene brought it all back. Don't get me wrong, my mother wanted a lot of children. She ended up having five with one lost in pregnancy. My mother tirelessly pushed through, providing proper meals, a well furnished, beautiful home, and loving parenting. It was most definitely never my dream. It still isn't. All the women in our "Cul de Sac" which was Roland Avenue, in the 1950's lived that life. They were ALL homemakers with working husbands. It was the era befoe women had credit cards or cars or any of the labor saving things we got later, like disposable diapers,or even,in that neighborhood education beyond high school. They spent their daysvacuuming and dusting, doing laundry, grocery shopping, starting dinner at 3:30 after we kids came home from school and were out playing, so it would be ready when Dad got home, then washing the dishes and pots and pans.

It seemed to me, at the time, that they were mostly happy enough in their lives. Who knows? Did they, even?

The Ballerina's life didn't seem that appealing to me, collecting eggs, milking the cow, mixing stuff up and baking it and feeding and answering the demands of all those children.

The TWIST! The Needleman couple did one interview too many and came under scrutiny and criticism. He talked over his wife and answered questions directed at her; he bought her an apron when she had said publicly she wanted a trip to Greece for her 34th birthday; He told the press his wife got so exhausted she had to take to her bed for a week sometimes. People got worried about her.

When I read more, I discovered some facts which made things more clear. Both Hannah and her husband Daniel were the children of Mormon families and each was one of nine siblings. At 17 Hannah realized her dream to escape to New York City and have a different life, but just at the end of her teens, she ended up right back where she started. DAniel was not raised on a farm, but in a wealthy suburb of Connecticut.

The TWIST: They are moving to Ireland for a change and taking up a course in Cookery at a famous Irish Cooking School that specializes in farm to table organic cooking. No word on exactly how long they will be gone, but I think the furor stirred up by the interview may have been hurtful to them and their somewhat "Disney" image, so they decided to get out of town for awhile. Smart move.

I don't care what life any woman chooses and I can clearly see the appeal a home-making lifestyle could have for someone without wider ambitions - the cosy daytime solitude, the simple repetitive chores without the pressures of deadlines and commutes.

Before I started my deep dive into the Ballerina Farm controversy today, my sister and I had been grocery shopping. She had the day off and I am long retired. I was saying how lucky we were that we both had careers that were interesting to us and that we enjoyed. I was a teacher, she was a hospitality worker - mostly waiter, sometimes bartender. My sister loves socializing, food, drinks, parties! I loved teaching and learning and both my subjects: English literature and Art.

I hope that Hannah loves her career too, and I hope those nine childbirths weren't as traumatizingly painful as my one child birth was - and I had an epidural! It was the 10 hours of labor before it that was horrible.

I can't help wondering what it is going to be like when those nine children are teenagers! Maybe they will send them away to boarding school!

Happy trails - wherever yours may take you!

By the way there was a lot of talk about feminist hating on the 'trad wife' ballerina, but in all my research I didn't see any at all and I think it was a fake enemy. No feminist I every knew would deny any woman her CHOICE in career or lifestyle!

wrightj45@yahoo.com