Mothers And Daughters

The Pratt offers 'Story Anytime'Ever feel you need a story -- a nice little fable or folktale? Well, there's one as near as your phone, thanks to "A Story Anytime," a new service of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Pratt staffers have recorded 3- or 4-minute tales that you can listen to any hour, day or night. There's a different story every week and the library's goal is to repeat each story only once a year. The service, part of the library's program to promote literacy, is financed by a grant from Bell Atlantic and the American Library Association.

"The Bonesetter's Daughter," by Amy Tan. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 353 pages. $25.95. Ingest enough of Amy Tan's stories and even a reader from the American heartland might feel Chinese. Because once you wander past the very Asian ghosts, superstitions, salutations and English-as-a-second-language locutions, the universal appeal of Tan's audience-pleasing novels -- the recurrent "Chinese" theme that rings true in English and in translation into Danish, Czech, or Tagalog -- is that adult children (especially daughters)

TYSONS CORNER, Va. -- A festive din fills Neiman Marcus, where designer Kate Spade has come to promote her new line of beauty products and fragrance. A 90-minute queue of chattering Spade acolytes, all female, winds through the cosmetics department. They sip lemonade from pastel glasses and nibble cookies that look like miniature Kate Spade handbags. Sales associates, dressed in circle skirts and wearing pert little ponytails, a la Audrey Hepburn (a Spade inspiration), are deployed through the store to draw a crowd.

Posing for the cameras is nothing new to celebrities, but truly candid shots at home are rare. In a new book, Hollywood insider and amateur photographer Joyce Ostin captures famous mothers and daughters in unguarded moments of affection. There's Madonna getting a hug from her dark-haired daughter, Lourdes; Jennifer Lopez being sweetly pecked on the cheek by mom Guadelupe. And Olivia Newton-John hamming it up with her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi. "Hollywood Moms" (Harry N. Abrams, $29.95)

Mother-bashing. It is one of the most popular pastimes of the '90s.It goes from the Oprah show (as in "My mother stole my husband" or "My mother made me clean my plate and that's why I weigh 400 pounds") to magazine articles about famous people who had overbearing mothers (February's Ladies' Home Journal cover story in which Jodie Foster talks about her lost childhood and her changing relationship with her mom). Who cares?And then some medical bulletins give fuel to the flame: "You can be allergic to your mother . . ."

A Southeast Baltimore girl named Tiffany, 10, got dressed up in a pink and red sweater and took a long trip to see her mother yesterday. Together, they put on bonnets, gloves and aprons while they dipped Easter eggs and talked.But it wasn't a regular pre-Easter get-together. It was a visit behind bars. Tiffany was one of 21 Girl Scouts who came in a red van yesterday morning to the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup, where their mothers were let out of their 5-foot-by-10-foot cells to try and cram days, weeks and months of mothering into three hours.

THE "I HAVEN'T Quite Finished It Yet" Book Club has been meeting for most of the 11 years of my daughter's life. Every month or so, my friends and I get together to discuss a book that one or two of us has found the time to read.After a lively literary exchange that lasts about 20 minutes, we have another glass of wine and talk about everything but books. Our book club is more to us than a book club, I think.Generally, it is the husband's job to disappear with the kids on book club night, but before a meeting scheduled for my house, my daughter and her friend Sarah asked if they could stay and "serve."

A MEMORABLE PLACE Mothers and daughters Gail Parker SPECIAL TO THE SUN It's 4 p.m. on the beach, the golden hour. This is my second day in Ocean City, and already the waves have lulled me into that hypnotic state that says ahhh. I'm flanked on either side by two friends from Baltimore, and scattered around us on colorful towels are our daughters, eight in all. Our husbands are home in Baltimore enjoying the quiet that comes only when all their women vacate the premises. They don't care for the beach.

DECEMBER IS a busy time of year, and many of us find ourselves cramming countless holiday chores into a few harried weekends. But last Saturday, Girl Scout Troop 1345 offered an antidote to the holiday frenzies - a relaxing, civilized mother-daughter tea. "Around the holidays, we get hustled and bustled," said troop leader Sue Marino. "I thought it would be nice for mothers and daughters to relax together." Eighty people gathered at historic Carroll Baldwin Hall in Savage for two hours of sipping, sampling and socializing.

The mother and daughter relax on a cushy sofa, laughing quietly as they speak of their unusual yet utterly normal life together. "Sometimes I get a little frustrated [with you], don't I, Talynn?" the mom asks. "Yes, but we always work it out," the 9-year-old replies, leaping onto Traci Lucien and applying a huge hug. "Nobody's taking my Mommy. She's tooken. We're together forever!" Talynn exclaims. It's an especially tender moment, considering the two met just two years ago. That was when Lucien, a single professional who was then 49, adopted Talynn (pronounced Tay-LINN )