Alice was neither tall nor short. She was neither beautiful nor plain. When at age twenty she married George, she was wide hipped, with full soft breasts, generous mouth, upturned nose, and bright shining blue eyes. She was also three months pregnant to George.
It was no shotgun wedding. Alice had told George that she did not want him to marry her if he did not really want to. George, who sincerely loved Alice, had exploded. "You'll marry me if I have to drag you to the altar." He did not have to drag her.
George worked for a company in a semi-skilled capacity that made concrete pipes and culverts. The wages were not good, so they were always on a tight budget. Soon after their marriage they were fortunate to be granted a house built by the State Government for people on low incomes.
After the birth of their first child, another one was quickly on its way. Alice loved children and soon after they had moved into their house, she became a sort of substitute mother for the neighbourhood children. Many of these children belonged to single parent families, or had inadequate parents, or both, so they came to Alice for the love and consolation she so generously gave.
If they grazed their knee, they went to Alice. If they broke a toy, Alice tried to mend it. If they were hungry, Alice somehow stretched her limited budget to feed them.
Alice was the Great Earth Mother, always there for all this world's unhappy children, of whatever age.
The local men and women also came to Alice with their woes – "He hit me again last night." -"I came home and the guy from next door was fucking her on the sofa"- she had words of comfort and advice for them.
Alice enjoyed her sex life with George immensely. For both of them, it was the outcome of their love for each other.
George was a morning person and Alice an evening person, so in the morning it was a "quick one for George," and in bed at night, it was "a long one for Alice."
For Alice sex was a combination of factors. In addition to the release of sexual tension, it was fun, it was an expression of love, and, earth mother that she was it was a means of comforting and consoling George when he was troubled.
Sometimes at night, when George had ejaculated into her, she would sit across him with his penis still inside her and laughingly say, "I'm going to hold on to you all night." She would then proceed to hold on until he rose in her again and put more sperm in.
Unlike many women, she loved having her husband's sperm in her, and after his morning "quick one," she would try to hold on to his fluid long after he had gone to work. "That's part of him still with me," she said to herself.
After the birth of her second child, the first of two bitter blows fell upon Alice and George. They were told that Alice could not have any more children. To Alice the lover of children, and George who derived joy from helping her to have them, this announcement was crushing.
Alice, with her usual determined outlook on life, soon found a way round the problem. "Let's become foster parents," she said to George.
"They'd never let us," replied George. "They only want well-off foster parents, not battlers like us."
"You don't know that for sure," retorted Alice.
"All right, give it a go if you want to," said George.
An application to become foster parents was made, and there now followed questionnaires, interviews and home inspections.
George had been right about the financial angle, but it became clear even to the bureaucratic officialdom of the Social Welfare Department, that in Alice they had the eternal loving mother, ready to take any of God's unhappy creatures to her ample bosom. So, they were accepted.
There were some months of waiting before Adrian arrived.
Adrian was a surprise. He came from a family where his father had been sent to prison for twenty years for murder, and a mother who was a hopeless drug addict. There were three other children – one boy and two girls, all of whom had been taken into care by the Welfare Department and placed in one foster home, with the exception of Adrian.
The problem was, that Adrian at fifteen years old, was much older than his brother and sisters, and was on the age borderline for State organised foster care. Most foster parents did not want children who had entered puberty, with all the mad, hormone racing problems of that age group.
So, it was that Adrian was initially left out. The Department turned to Alice and George and the social worker said quite frankly, "If you won't take him, I don't know what we'll do."
After some discussion, Alice and George agreed to take the boy. At their first meeting with Adrian, they saw a thin, pale faced lad who was very withdrawn. He looked at least three years younger than his actual age, and he did not seem to possess that noisy, exuberant quality rightly or wrongly associated with the teenager. They found it very difficult to get him to speak, his replies to their questions being given in monosyllables.
"He's had a bad time of it," confided the social worker. "He's practically had to look after his siblings, and has been subjected to some pretty brutal treatment."
Adrian made no comment about the room they had got ready for him, and didn't seem to take any interest in any other part of the house or garden. What he did do, was to eat as if he had not had a proper meal for years, which of course, he hadn't.
The mother in Alice almost wept at his condition, and George was concerned about their ability to communicate with this distant youth. They approached the problem with great care, not trying to force responses from Adrian, and in the following months he started to come out of his hard protective shell.
One of the first signs of his entering into a warm relationship with the family was his taking an interest in Alice's two young children. Alice observed him playing games with them and amusing them. The next sign was when he came into the kitchen one day to ask something of Alice, and he began with, "Mum…"
This did not impact on Alice immediately, but after he had left the kitchen, it hit her. It was the first time he had called her by any name or title.
Thereafter Alice continued to be "mum,' and George became, "dad."
Alice fostered Adrian with all the love she had to give. She provided a tender female environment for him, while George introduced him to those masculine pursuits, like football, fishing, "mucking about with cars" and "doing things down in the shed."
