Baubo, The Belly Laugh, and Spring Awakenings

It’s been officially spring for a couple of weeks and I’ve been loving this warm weather across much of MA this week. It’s been nearly three years since Larry and I moved to Boston, and these New England winters have made me appreciate the first signs of spring that much more so. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking lately… I’ve felt as though I’m poised on the edge of decision-making with regards to family building, and I think I’m just about there. In these last couple of days of Passover, I’ve also been drawn closer to my faith. It’s a holy season for everyone, really. Whether it’s the pull of faith or perhaps the buzzing of the birds and the bees this time of year, there is certainly this feeling of energy, this vibrational hum pulsing just beneath the surface of things. Perhaps it’s merely our skin delighting in all that sunshine, turning light into some much needed vitamin D.

I just finished Ellen Frankel’s The Five Books of Miriam. This is a must-read for any Jewish woman (just short of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent– in fact, I call that required reading for every woman, Jewish or otherwise). It bills itself as a woman’s commentary on the Torah. With it’s highly conversational structure not unlike you might find in the margins of Torah midrashim, it is both feminist and traditional, forging new patterns of thought and interpretation while contextualizing the Torah into a feminist modernity from the lenses of our daughters, mothers, bubbes, and the women prophets and stars of the Bible itself. It is an incredibly empowering read for any Jewish woman coping with infertility, as it speaks so beautifully and painfully honest from the perspectives of so many barren Matriarchs.

In this rather empowered mindset, as I tap into that spring hum that seems to be buzzing all around me, I am reminded of a story that my dear friend Honeybee shared at one of the Red Tent Temples from a few months back. It’s the legend of Baubo, a little known tale in the greater story of Demetre and her daughter Persephone’s dark descent into Hades.

Demetre, the Greek goddess of the harvest and fertility of the soil, had a daughter, Persephone, who was wickedly abducted by Hades, the Lord of the Underworld. He tricks Persephone into eating the seeds of a pomegranate, and by consuming any food or drink while in the Underworld, she has sealed her fate for eternity: she may never leave. Demetre is understandably distraught, in fact, so much so, her grief plunges her into a dark, cold despair. She retreats from the World: the earth cannot bear crops, the land stricken with barrenness as she grieves the loss of her precious Persephone.

So much of Demetre’s pain resonates within the ALI community.

Enter Baubo: descriptions vary from a woman with voluminous skirts to a talking vulva. Baubo sits in front of Demetre and lifts her skirts before her, telling raucous, bawdy jokes, inspiring a fountain of joy in the form of the deepest belly laugh, from our solar plexus and radiating outward. Baubo is the only one who ends Demetre’s grieving, whose tears dry and face contorts into laughter. Through her bawdy jokes and brazen presentation, Baubo encourages Demetre to return to the World and to once again bear fertile fields. Baubo gives Demetre the courage to recover, to move on, to find joy and laughter in life again. And with that, the World awakens from the darkest Winter into the first Spring.

What can we in the ALI community learn from the legend of Baubo?

That after darkness, after pain, after loss: there is joy again. That we must encourage ourselves to laugh fully and completely, to laugh from the bottoms of our bellies, and by laughing we truly live in the moment. Even in our journeys to parenthood frought with worries, needles, tests, inconsiderate remarks and daily reminders of our struggles: there is still laughter to be found- there will always be a Spring to follow the Winter.

I have been feeling my own Spring Awakening as our path to family building comes into focus, and I wanted to share this energy, this inspiration: to laugh, to give ourselves permission to laugh, to feel joy, and to live in the moment. Here are some places I’d like to point folks in their IF journey, to take a moment to pause and laugh a deep belly laugh with Baubo herself:

Infertile Naomi is finding 999 Reasons to Laugh at Infertility. In addition to her blog, she has a Facebook page of the same name. Always hilarious, painfully honest – she is worth a read when you need to laugh at the absurdity of IF.

In the same vein as Infertile Naomi’s blog, there’s the YouTube video “Aunt Jane Knows More Than My RE.”

WiseGuy over at Woman Anyone? is now on CD2 after “Agendy Fugnimimi” showed up. Always an interesting read, WiseGuy has a myriad of names she calls our dear Aunt Flo. Her post reminded me of a site I stumbled upon with a list of international phrases for good ol’ AF – I make no vouchers if these are in fact true colloquialisms, but they are hilarious just the same.

And I always recommend People of Walmart when you need to feel better about yourself. Ok, so maybe it’s not exactly politically correct to laugh at others’ expense to feel better about yourself, but at least click over and check out the hilarity. Other photo blogs good for a laugh: This is Why You’re Fat, LATFH (nsfw), Awkward Family Photos, Cake Wrecks, and Lamebook (occasionally nsfw). Honorable mention, for all you LOST fans: Never Seen Lost, a blog recapping each episode of Season 6 by someone who’s never watched a second of the show prior to this season.

The moral of today’s post: take a moment to pause and laugh, to laugh so hard and so deep from within your belly and womb that your tears are out of joy, of being fully in the moment. Let Spring awaken within each of you.