DATE: Sunday, May 11, 1997                  TAG: 9705090086

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Maddry 

                                            LENGTH:   79 lines

HUGS AND BOOKS: UNCONVENTIONAL MOM WAS AHEAD OF HER TIME

I CAN ONLY remember corn flakes for the first six years of my life. Then sandwiches and an occasional bowl of soup. Soup required turning on the stove and measuring water into the can, finding a pan to place on the stove burner, any number of complicated things. It was always an adventure for my mother on the order of the Apollo mission to the moon.

``Well now, here's some nice chicken-noodle soup from Campbell's,'' she would purr. Her soup always tasted funny. I once found a cigarette butt among the noodles.

I recall another bowl - of tomato soup - with a slightly metallic taste that proved to have been caused by the top of the can. My spoon raised it from the bottom of the bowl where it resembled a jagged silver coaster.

I guess it seems unfair to mention the thing my mother did least well on the eve of Mother's Day. Sort of like emphasizing the holes in Spaghetti-Os - another of her specialities - without noticing the surrounding food.

Anyway, there must be millions like her now, women too busy at the office to pay much attention to cooking. But in her time - before the doors of opportunity were opened to women - millions of them spent lots of time in the kitchen.

Not mother. She had better things to do. She read. And since none of the people in the books and magazines she explored were very concerned with food, the kitchen seemed an irrelevant and alien place, best avoided.

She would sprawl like a prima donna on a chaise lounge reading the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, the short stories of James Thurber and Dorothy Parker, movie magazines with gossip and photos of screen stars and newspaper columnists from Walter Winchell to Jim Bishop.

And she frittered away her time repeating to her sons the stories and anecdotes she had read.

She had other failings as well.

``Can you believe that mother never learned to drive a car?'' my brother asked on the phone from his home in California the other day.

We spend a lot of time discussing mother now that she's dead. Most of it in a humorous way that sugar-coats the resentment we both felt now and then, but more then than now.

The furniture that was never dusted, the clothes that were rarely laundered, the times we were left in the care of aunts or grandmother.

``Your mother simply can't cope,'' we were told. It was true.

``Is there anything to eat?'' I once asked. She raised her head from the pillow and placed the book on a bedside table, opening a drawer.

``Here, try one of these Mary Janes, precious. They're simply delicious,'' she said, handing me several. They were her favorite candy: squares of taffy with peanut butter inside, wrapped in bright yellow paper.

She had few interests other than movies and reading. And her poetry. She wrote very nice poems. Some exceptional. A few of them were printed in the local newspaper.

And she had nice hands. That's another thing her sons laugh about when they talk.

``Did you ever notice how her hands were always prominent in the photos taken of her?'' my brother asked. I remember one in particular. She wore her hand beneath her throat in extremely dramatic fashion, fingers splayed to display her diamond ring. Who did she think she was? The Duchess of Kent?

It all seemed so phony at the time. But then mother did have nice-looking hands. And she knew it.

My brother and I longed for the normal family and the conventional mother: one who made biscuits, chaired a committee at the PTA, kept a tidy house, drove a car, and didn't put a hand on display whenever a camera was around.

But it wasn't in the cards for us. What we got was a lady who quoted Dorothy Parker a lot and hugged us even more. We certainly felt neglected at times. But there was never a moment when we felt unloved.

The other day I spoke with my son's wife about the child they are expecting. ``Have you gotten any advice on what to do?'' I asked.

``Read to it early. And give the baby lots of hugs when it gets here,'' she said.

It occurred to me that my own mother had done a better job than her sons imagined.

But then I don't want to give the old girl too much credit. The other day a neighbor invited me over for a meal. ``I'll make you a meal like your mother used to make,'' she promised.

I replied, ``For God's sakes don't!'' KEYWORDS: MOTHER'S DAY

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