It’s the shortest day of the year – winter solstice … the day our wise old sage Uncle Charlie, chose to leave the living world a few years back. The day Jacquie was born 50 years ago.

Knowing its gone 7am, allowing the winter dark to keep me cocooned in bed warmth, in early morning contemplations.

I’m roused by Maudie’s bark at the gate. Dog scampering in the darkness may mean messing with roos…

My bed nest gives way instantly to feet on wood floor, as sleep slides backwards tumbling into the scrumpled hole left empty under the covers. Wrestling the old door handle on the old hall door, I fall half sleepy into the bright lit kitchen at the second bark (good, dog’s still at the gate). Reaching the back door, Gerry’s coming up the path from the other direction,

“She was with me in the studio until a moment ago, turned my back and she was gone. I’ll get her.”

Sliding back under the doona, my cold toes find the luscious cosy, toasty, warm bedness again, as Maudie leaps in beside me for a cuddle; her cold toes reaching up like fingers to bring my hand to her soft ear flop for a scratch.

I think of my dear friend Jacq … the “White Witch” Gerry calls her (when I mention winter solstice means her birthday) … my trusted birthing buddy, who answered our call and arrived by my side with her basket of tinctures and homeopathics at 5am on a morning many years ago, when she and I were both in the prime of our mothering, to be alongside as I birthed Annie Rose, my second babe. I ring her to catch her with birthday love before she heads off to teach (and share her birthday with her class of Steiner kids). We talk of winter solstice celebrations and the stepping over at 50, opening the door to the wise old hag.

I’m loving my old hag, my Baba Yaga self, slowly dawning within, five years in to my fifties. She’s feels like a trusty old witch and she speaks my truth with so much more assurance than my former selves. She channels her way in to my responses and surprises me with her resonance; sounding through my spoken words, slipping from my fingers after intimate listenings; leading me along new pathways to old doorways; guiding me firmly back to myself; nudging pushing stepping me forward to the journey within and without. She’s alongside now for this new birthing of my ‘morning writer’ self; this transition place, finding and weaving new ancient stories here on this new dawn.

“The sunrise is spectacular!” Gez calls from the paddock, and in my next leap on this special day, we’re out in the lifting darkness together, golden clouds skirting virga rain, the specks of rising sun, peeking through the trees on the horizon hill. Dogs leap, ducks waddle, sun rises …. start as we wish to continue ….transit to the new. Winter solstice.