Nobody ever said motherhood was easy. Tamara Davis was 24 years old in 1971, a farmer's daughter from Muskogee, Oklahoma, still a little dazzled by her life as a young wife in Phoenix. Then her marriage broke up. Tamara was disillusioned and anxious, but she wasn't alone. Not with three toddlers climbing all over her. "I took the kids everywhere, partly to keep an eye on them, but also because I needed them near me," she says. "Dawn, Sean and Shannon were the truest friends I had." Today, 22 years later, most of Tamara's motherly duties are done. Son Sean, 25, is a fashion model and father of a tyke--making Tamara a grandmother. More vital to us this month, her two daughters, Dawn and Shannon--still their mom's best pals and closest confidantes--grew up into beauties who look as good as Tamara did when she was their age. Remarkably, Tamara still looks as good as she did when she was their age. "People don't believe us when we say she's our mom," says Dawn, 26. Dawn lives, works and parties with Shannon, 24, and Tamara, who may be the only 46-year-old jewelry designer in the Southwest who still gets carded in bars. According to Mom, raising her photogenic brood alone was "difficult, but it kept us close. Being on our own is what made us a team." She could have remarried a dozen times over. There was no shortage of suitors: "Men from the ages of 25 to 70," Tamara says. "But if one of the girls wouldn't like one guy, the other didn't approve of the next. So I stayed single." And watched her daughters grow into young women. "Dawn is the sweet one, a real charmer," says Tamara, while "Shannon is the wildest and the wittiest--like Eddie Murphy if he were a white female." Still, it was Dawn who played the aggressor during the family's frequent outings at a Phoenix go-cart track. "Dawn and Shannon drove like maniacs," Tamara recalls with a grin. "Dawn once drove up behind my go-cart and smashed into me." Off the track, however, the family prospered. The furniture store Tamara ran paid for a house in Phoenix and an apartment in Dallas. Recently, after 20 years of running the store, she founded another family business where Shannon and Dawn now help their mom design and market her own line of costume jewelry. They plan to launch careers and families, too, but there's no hurry. "Maybe we've corrupted our mom," says Shannon, "but we're having a great time. She's not surprised by anything we do. She doesn't judge us, she just gives us the best thing in the world: unconditional love." The girls call her Momma at home but switch to Tamara for their nights out--to keep their secret. "We all love it when someone thinks we're girlfriends or three sisters," says Dawn. "But we won't let just anyone dance with our mom. Shannon and I have to OK him first." Asked whether her girls are overprotective, Tamara shrugs. "I don't mind. I'm not hellbent to get married after all these years, though I wouldn't mind having a boyfriend." Potential beaus beware: To win a date with Tamara, you'll have to go through Dawn and Shannon first.--Ralph Marino
