“Why do I have the only mother in the world who orchestrates her daughter’s whole life without permission?”
“Why do I have the only daughter in the world whose sole purpose in life is to be negative?”
This is one passage of dialogue from the memoir “Love! Laugh! Panic! Life with My Mother” by native Milwaukeean Rosemary Mild and published by Magic Island Literary Works in time for Mothers’ Day (paperback, 138 page, $9.95).
Mild, nee Pollack, wrote in the preface that she had originally intended to produce a volume of essays; but the essays she wrote “were not just about me. They’re about Mother and me.
“Even though she doesn’t play a large part in every scene, she’s always there. Looming. Encouraging. Warning. Always the Protagonist, the Star, the Heroine, the Antagonist and sometimes the Villain…”
Mild has had a successful career as a journalist and mystery writer. From her account, her mother, Luby (nee Bragarnick) Pollack also had remarkable talents.
According to the book, Luby came to the U.S. from Russia when she was five, and was the daughter of very poor immigrants. “Mother lavished riches on me because as a child she didn’t have any,” Mild wrote.
Luby earned a degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1929 and married psychiatrist Saul Pollack in 1932. She became a freelance writer. The publications for which she wrote included The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
Mild includes in her book the texts of two articles Luby wrote for The Chronicle in 1948 about Luby’s father, Harry Bragarnick, on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
Mild also allows her brother, John Pollack, to write a chapter of memories about their mother. He expresses an insight that might explain some of the ambivalences in both of their relationships with her: “She never felt she got the professional recognition she deserved. No matter how much she received, she badly needed more.”
Mild came to a similar conclusion. The dialogue quoted at the beginning of this article comes from the book’s last chapter, about how Luby cajoled and drove the resistant Rosemary into “making her debut.”
More than a year later, Luby died of stomach cancer at age 48. After the funeral, her daughter thought about the debutante incident and wondered, “Why did Mother need it?”
“Despite all her achievements, she could never quite fill a certain emptiness, a nagging insecurity that she was missing out on something. An unflagging romantic, she clung to a deeply embedded yearning for recognition and drama in her life.”
Mild and her husband Larry now live in Honolulu and have written mystery novels together. Those books as well as “Love! Laugh! Panic!” are available through the website magicile.com.
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