July 11, 2002 | 9:53 AM

New York Tendaberry is my mother�s favorite album of all time, with the possible exception of Joni Mitchell�s Clouds. The two of us sat on her sofa a few months back, covered with an old blue afghan, drinking wine and listening to her copy over and over again. Mom got a little tipsy and sang along loudly and slightly off key, embarrassing my sixteen-year-old brother who had friends over, but delighting me.

During her college years, my mother listened to this record until it warped. She would spend entire days in her dorm room, smoking joints and sipping cheap beer. Reading tarot cards and jotting notes in the margins of Keat�s Collected works while a stick of strawberry incense smoldered in the near darkness.

I like to think of my mother that way�19 or 20 years old, slim and bespeckled with long dark hair and bellbottoms, resembling a more literate and bohemian Ali McGraw. Dreaming of what life might hold. Planning her wild jaunt across Europe and preparing to study at the Central School of Drama in London. Getting stoned while singing along tonedeaf-edly to Laura Nyro.

(My mom used to smoke a lot of pot, and loves to recount stories of her wilder days. But when I or my 19 year old sister so much as hint at our drug use, she shakes a finger at us and reminds us that smoking marijuana is illegal and will probably destroy all of your brain cells. Parenting is one big double standard, I tell ya�.)

I called her this morning on the phone.

She asked me how I�m feeling.

Was I on the pill?

How is John behaving?

Have I made another appointment with the endocrinologist?

Will I promise to see a therapist?

When is my ultrasound?

What are the repercussions of RU-486?

Am I overextending myself by working too much?

She�s just concerned.

I wound up having that conversation, the one I didn�t want to have�especially at 8:00 in the morning.

All I wanted to do was tell her that I bought the newly remastered New York Tendaberry yesterday night.

And that I love her.