What was going on when I was born?

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to vote today to raise the $1 toll on the Triborough Bridge and four other East River crossings by 25 cents, sources close to the agency said yesterday. The increases would probably go into effect late next month or early in March. Richard Rav itch, the chairman of the M.T.A., made the proposal to raise the tol ls last September to help finance the agency's five-yearcapital impro vement program for the subways and commuter lines. If approved, tolls would go to $1.25 on the Triborough, Bronx-Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges and for the Queens-Midtown and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels. Tolls would probably go from 60 cents to $1 on the Henry Hudson Bridge, connecting the Bronx and Manhattan, and from 75 cents to $1 on two bridges between the Rockaway Peninsula and the bulk of Brooklyn and Queens.

Millicent Fenwick, the elegant yet combative Republican grande dame of the House of Representatives, nestled her two youngest grandchildren on the sofa in her living room overlooking the snowy hills of New Jersey's fox-hunting country. An old-fashioned box radio sat nearby, a telephone was within arm's reach and logs burned briskly in the fireplace. This is where Mrs. Fenwick, who is running for the United States Senate, does much of her political work - reading, answering mail and telephoning. ''I have a total amateur approach,'' she said of politics and her career, which has made her one of the most widely recognized members of Congress. ''I have never used a television person before, and all this professionalism is not happy-making - being packaged by professionals as though you were some kind of new invention like the splash-free valve on a faucet.''

International Instructions for opposing martial law in Poland were issued by three leaders of the suspended union Solidarity who are in hiding. The typewriten leaflet called for 12 actions, including ''passive resistance'' in the workplace. (Page A6, Columns 4-6.) An account of the fighting in Gdansk in the days following the imposition of martial law Dec. 13 was given by a young worker just arrived in Warsaw. The worker is now a courier for a resistance movement. (A6:1-3.)

Cleavon Little stars in ''Keyboard,'' a new play by Matt Robinson, which opens tonight at 7:30 at the Henry Street Settlement's New Federal Theater, 466 Grand Street. Mr. Little was seen this season as the saxophonist Lester Young in ''The Resurrection of Lady Lester'' at the Manhattan Theater Club. In ''Keyboard,'' he plays a fictional musician - a once-great rhythm-and-blues singer who ignores the problems of his family as he dreams of his past. Tickets are $2.50 and $5. Information: 598-0400. HIGH-HEELED WOMEN AT 54TH ST . CLUB

The Reagan Administration has laid the groundwork for a Presidential decision to begin producing a new nerve gas for chemical warfare, according to Administration and Congressional officials. The plan includes a request for a substantial increase in the 1983 budget for s uch weapons. Senior military officials in the Pentagon long have contended that the United States must modernize its capabilities for chemical warfare as a deterrent to the Soviet Union, which Pentagon officials say has built up an effective capacity for using such weapons. In addition, the Reagan Administration has asserted repeatedly that there is growing evidence, in Southeast Asia and in Afghanistan, of Soviet willingness to use chemical weapons such as ''yellow rain,'' which has been described as a toxic chemical substance.

BIRTHDAYS should be fun, and double birthdays doubly so. It so happens that both the Grace Borgenicht Gallery, now at 724 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street, and the Terry Dintenfass Gallery, now at 50 West 57th Street, this year celebrate their 20th anniversaries. What better plan, they thought, than to mark the occasion jointly, by showing work by artists who had been with them throughout the 20 years of their existence?

IT always seems busiest backstage just before a season. The City Center was no exception the other day, when Dance Theater of Harlem prepared for its opening this week. Stagehands hurtled through the cramped backstage quarters, muttering to people to watch their feet. Arthur Mitchell, who, with Karel Shook, founded and directs the company, enveloped a visitor in a quick bear hug as he rushed by. Dancers were everywhere, among them four of the company's brightest young talents - Stephanie Dabney, Lorraine Graves, Donald Williams and Lowell Smith. All of them will be performing in major roles this weekend. Stephanie Dabney was found curled in a corner in practice clothes and glittery eye make-up, reading a dance magazine in reflected light from the stage. ''Yes, it's me,'' she whispered reassuringly. ''We've just been rehears ing 'Firebird,' and the make-up gets me into the right mood.'' This weekend, Miss Dabney will dance the title role in the fable abo ut a magical bird who saves a handsome prince and beautiful pri ncess from a wicked sorcerer.

The Treasury Department, in an effort to eliminate abuses in tax treaties with other countries, has reopened little-publicized but acrimonious negotiations over such a treaty with the British Virgin Islands, a Caribbean tax haven. The stakes in the negotiations are sizable. Treasury officials say the existing treaty jeopardizes their whole international tax policy because it is the most extreme example of tax haven abuse. For Citicorp, which has raised billions of dollars through a subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands and is the primary beneficiary of the tax treaty, the talks have already created difficulities, according to bank documents filed with the Federal Reserve Board. And for the British Virgin Islands, the tax issue is crucial in that revenues generated by foreign financial interests tied to the treaty are important to its economic development.

Reflecting hard times in the auto industry, the Ford Motor Company said today that it would not pay a dividend for this year's first quarter, the first time the company has not made such a payment since it went public in 1956. k Ford had been paying 30 cents a share since mid-1980, when it had cut the dividend from $1 a quarter. Philip Caldwell, Ford's chairman, said, ''T he board's action reflected not only continuation of the long s lump in the U.S. automotive market, but uncertainty in the gen eral economy with respect to the timing of the recovery.'' As a result, Mr. Caldwell said, ''It is essential that prudent steps be taken to conserve cash resources so that the company can continue th e development and introduction of its new products.'' The action - not unexpected -came after a year in which Ford is expected to report a loss of about $1 billion. Ford lost $1.5 billion in 1980. The company's 1980 fourth-quarter results are due to be released late this month or early in February. In the nine months to Sept. 30, Ford reported a net loss of $713.8 million on sales of $29.23 billion.

Invoking the heroic efforts of volunteer rescuers in Wednesday's airplane crash in Washington, President Reagan yesterday exhorted business and civic leaders to display the same ''spirit of shared sacrifice'' in finding private substitutes for Government welfare programs. The President asserted that his policies were not responsible for the economic recession and suggested that thrift and harder work - ''surprisingly, it won't take much'' - could bring the slowdown to a ''faster than expected'' end. The deputy White House press secretary, Larry Speakes, said Mr. Reagan's remark was not intended to change his earlier prediction that the recession would begin to recede by the end of the year's second quarter. Mr. Speakes said that the President, in his speech, meant he thought the recession would end quicker than the Administration's critics expect.

The formation of a private nonprofit corporation to build or renovate 30,000 units of middle-income housing in New York City within a five-year period was announced yesterday by city housing officials and David Rockefeller. The announcement came after President Reagan addressed a luncheon of the New York City Partnership at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and renewed his call for the private sector to become more involved in charitable and social causes. Mr. Rockefeller, the former chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, is the chairman of the Partnership, a private civic organization whose members include representatives of major private institutions in New York. He referred to the housing corporation - to be called the New York City Housing Partnership - in a speech to the luncheon's 1,600 guests.

AN exhibition of new work by Richard Diebenkorn is always something of an event. An exhibition that marks a striking new development in his work is therefore likely to be a special event, and this is what we have in Mr. Diebenkorn's latest exhibition at M. Knoedler & Company, 19 East 70th Street (through Jan. 28). This is a show consisting of some 25 untitled ''drawings'' - actually they are small paintings on paper - executed in the last two years. In these bright, deft, inventive pictures, Mr. Diebenkorn can be seen bidding farewell, as it were, to his much-admired ''Ocean Park'' series and inaugurating a distinctly new phase of his work.