It’s 5.30 am. The alarm has just beeped me from my dreams. It’s still pitch black outside and a blast of cold air hits me as I pull off the bed clothes and slip into the bathroom. It’s morning.

This is our daily routine. I get up at 5.30, write for an hour. Then Peter gets up. Sometimes I wake him but for the most part he’s disturbed by me and gets up after lightly snoozing again for a while. We have coffee and he eats breakfast while the sun begins its slow ascent and the sky begins to emerge in soft pinks and oranges. Though lately there has been a lot of fog and when I step outside to say good bye or drive him to work, depending on whether he has the use of Peter Glen’s ute or not, sometimes all I can see of the Clyde river is right in front of me. The rest is covered in delicate tendrils of wispy white. Early morning can be so breathtakingly pretty. The reward for waking so early!

Peter is usually on site just after 7. After he leaves I get some more time to write, and then the children begin to wake up. We are teaching them at home this year. Unschooling. We have things we are learning about – the building project is number one – I have never watched a house being built from scratch before and neither have they so every week we make a point of going up to the site and spending some time there checking what progress has been made, noticing things that have been done. It's an amazing thing to watch Peter in this other guise. Peter the builder.

I haven’t known him like this before. When we first met he was foreman on a Building-The-Education- Revolution school site in Canberra. I visited him there regularly and watched as he had authority over the implementation of a million dollar project. Watched as he told people what needed to be done and how and managed the site. The next year he was on site at a much larger build – the refurbishment of the Gungahlin Lakes Golf club. I saw him there too amidst the plant and concrete trucks, watched a raised slab be constructed and marvelled. But this, well this is something completely different. Watching Peter build an entire house with his own hands is remarkable.

So far we have watched him prepare for the concrete pours to lay the garage and then the house slab. The garage was fairly simple and the first pour we saw. The house floor was somewhat different. The slab was something new – an energy saving slab that involved the laying of foam and pouring over it. The foam absorbs the summer sun that pours in through the upper windows and then keeps the slab warm during the winter months. It’s very energy efficient and a long term cost saver. The day of that pour there were photographers on site and a lot of interest in the process. It was not only the children and I that were fascinated.

Watching Peter on site is like watching a zoo animal be transported back into the wild. Well kind of! It’s like the man is in his natural habitat amidst the mud and materials. He seems to come into his own when he is around the tools and it all seems to come so naturally to him. It’s quite an amazing to see this side of him and to see how extremely well he does it. Not that it isn’t hard work. Each afternoon he comes home dog tired, with aching limbs and it’s so important to remember that this is just for a season – that once the Glen’s house is finished we will have the opportunity to sail away for a while – the lure of the ocean is never far from us!

This build is an important part of our journey though. We feel that this has been so much the right decision to make, to stay and do this. The other Peter, the one the house is for, is himself a builder. The plan to build this house have been in place for a long time. It was not long after we sailed into the Bay that the other Peter learned the reason for the muscle weakness and other symptoms he was having – learned that he had MS. It has been a privilege to be able to be a part of their journey and to stay and get this house built for them. Apart from the fact that we needed the work – just knowing that we are doing something so important for others while slowing down our own lives and concentrating on our health, well its really alerted us to the opportunity we have wherever we go to do the same. I like knowing that when we sail on from here we will have left something significant behind us.

This week the house frame goes up. Peter says it is like mega flat-pack and trying to work out which pieces of steel go together a massive challenge! So far this week he has mostly spent his time sorting, moving and arranging the pieces! Rain brought him home early yesterday but the weather has mostly been just right so far and has resulted in few delays.
Each week now will be a big step forward in the build. A house is emerging – a home – made by Peter’s own hands.

It’s been nearly five years now since that chance meeting with him took me from being a single mother to eight kids and him from a dark and forlorn place, and saw us connect in such an unexpected way. We built a home together on the seas, a home not made with bricks and concrete and steel – but one we built just the same every day by our learning how to make a family of the bits we each brought. It’s been wonderful for us to see Peter step back into this other aspect of himself, to see him doing this thing he has spent his life doing, and to see him in this different context. I’m glad he doesn’t have to build all the time. It’s so hard on his body, but to see his capacity to make something out of nothing and to have it be right – well it’s fascinating. Priceless.

And on the weekends? you ask – he rests right? No! On the weekends he is usually to be found pottering about on board – fixing this or that, changing the engine oil or cleaning the decks – wandering around the marina, talking to other boaties, living this other bit of life that we all long to step back into the moment the house is finished!