THE MOTHER OF ALL SURRENDERS

WAVING a white flag is

an international symbol of surrender. It signifies that

the waver no longer has the

will to fight, and its meaning is enshrined in the Geneva Convention's rules of war.

The most famous surrenders in our history featuring a white flag came when British Gen. Lord Cornwallis laid down his arms to colonial forces during the Revolutionary War and in World War II when German troops surrendered to the U.S. Army by marching in the German countryside waving a branch with a white bed sheet.

Most recently, though, my mother, Carmella, used one to signal surrender in her undying quest to have me married and producing grandchildren.

Carmella performed the epitome of giving up when she ceremoniously hung my First Holy Communion dress from a plant on our front porch and put it up for sale during the annual Thompson Street flea market.

Her penmanship looked partly like the scribbling of a serial killer and partly like that of a woman who wants to make more meatballs for more grandkids.

Her endearing sales pitch? She scrawled "Make me a $%*$# offer!" on a Post-It and slapped it on the skirt of the beautiful handmade ivory-snow dress I wore in 1982 at St. George R.C. Church.

Twenty-five years later, the dress was still hanging in our basement wrapped in plastic, hoping to be resurrected as a christening gown for the babies I have yet to spawn for Carmella.

I'm sure that, from the time I was 18, every time she passed that dress on her way to do wash, she hoped it would have a second life, and she'd see it on one of her grandchildren during a baptism.

Quite honestly, the wedding dress could be used for a baby's christening gown, but I've made it crystal clear that even if I do enter into a third-finger, left-hand ceremony, there will be no white dress. In fact, it will include flip-flops, drag queens, mopeds, karaoke and the Key West sunset as a backdrop. (In the event of a drunken elopement, the Jersey shore will do.)

SO THERE, amid the Michael Jackson tapes, Nintendo games, and our dad's nicotine patches, 35mm cameras and 2007 Phillies memorabilia, she put my communion dress up for sale - and surrendered.

In Carm's defense, she put up a good fight before saying uncle. Although she acts like she's computer illiterate, I believe she had something to do with the hijacking of my Match.com account.

For example, my description of a good first date was "a trip to the Cooper River driving range to whack golf balls into the lake and then dinner in Chinatown with a nightcap of sitting on the porch making each other laugh." That was suspiciously changed to "I'm cheaper than a dollar store and easier to get into than a presidential primary." A gift certificate to an hourly motel was attached to my profile.

My hits then went from "Hey, let's meet for coffee and then walk along Kelly Drive" to "I have a half case of warm Milwaukee's Best and a bootleg copy of 'Wrestlemania' - but you have to bring the condoms."

Replies from the House of Corrections overloaded my mailbox with promises of whamming, bamming and thank-you-ma'aming . . . if they ever got paroled.

When a co-worker tried to set me up with one of her friends and a phone-tag relationship ensued, Carm popped her head into my bedroom and eavesdropped on the voice-mail I was leaving him. "Y'know," she scolded, "you don't try hard enough!"

The next day was the flea market, and she hung my marital chances (in her eyes) out to dry for the best offer.

She surrendered her matchmaking shenanigans, gave up on trying to sell me as a mail-order bride, looked at the two grandchildren she already had and figured she'd better start feeding and spoiling them more. And maybe, if she offered to watch them on a Saturday night, my sister and brother-in-law would give her another one.

To everyone's amusement, the communion dress didn't sell - even when she tried to give it away with a punch-bowl set.

Carm took it as a sign from above that maybe, just maybe, her favorite daughter, the middle child who put toothpaste on the toilet seat, invited Jehovah's Witnesses into the house during suppertime and painted my dad's toenails neon pink while he slept (causing him to get beat up the next day on the construction site) would indeed get married one day and give her more grandchildren.

And guarantee that the communion dress would be put to good use.

The truth is, in reality, raising a white flag in surrender doesn't always work. In the 1953 movie "War of the Worlds," the earthlings waved a white flag and, to make peace, tried to surrender to the visiting Martians - only to be incinerated by their heat-ray guns.

They must not be the marrying type. *

Patty-Pat Kozlowski lives and writes in Port Richmond and will not sign a pre-nup agreement . . . but her mother will.