Audrey Hinchcliffe lovingly plays with grandson Matthew at her birthday party, held at Caymanas Golf Club, St Catherine, on Friday, January 7, 2005. - File

IT IS THREE days to Mother's Day and Garth Hinchcliffe still is not sure what he will get his mom as a gift.

"I was thinking of getting her a laptop to replace the old desktop computer she has at home," he deliberates.

If not, he will get her another book. She loves books and she has never refused one, even though he may already have bought her as many as 17. She has a passion for reading and will read nearly anything she gets her hands on.

Garth's mom is Audrey Hinchcliffe, one of the island's most successful entrepreneurs, and a good mother.

Single-handedly, she was forced to raise son Garth and daughter Annette on her own after their father died at age 39.

not superwoman

Even though she was left alone to juggle two and a half jobs as a nurse and teacher, as well as a student, in intimidating New York City, motherhood was never about being a superwoman.

"You had to create a plan and you had to tell people you had a problem so you could get support," says Hinchcliffe.

The plan was really quite simple. "I bring home the money and you bring home the grades," was the pact she had made with her children.

It explains why Annette is a paediatrician in Atlanta, influenced by her mother's years of service as a nurse, and Garth, an engineer, is chief operations manager at the family's business - Manpower and Maintenance Services Limited.

"You need an education. I tell anybody even if I don't have this job anymore, I can go anywhere and get a job," Garth says without suggesting that his mother is about to fire him.

Mother Hinchcliffe, as successful as she is now, had her share of bad times. She remembers one year in particular when things were really bad. She had recently moved the family to Florida where she had started a new job. Suddenly, she fell ill while on a visit to Jamaica.

"It was Independence and I came up from Montego Bay to the stadium in Kingston for a week. The children were left in the States with friends because I had to get a break," she relates. "When I was at the stadium, I was having such severe abdominal pains."

ruptured ovarian cyst

Those abdominal pains turned out to be a ruptured ovarian cyst that required immediate surgery. It kept her away from her new job as director of nursing at the Jacksonville University Hospital in Florida for six weeks - a job which she subsequently had to give up.

"I had not long moved to Jacksonville. I had exhausted my savings. I had exhausted sick time. I was an indigent!" she recalls.

Hinchcliffe lived on charity, asking friends to buy food for her children and to pay her mortgage. She even had to depend on the goodwill of the Church.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com