PORTRAYAL 6. Biographic. The following is a brief recount of a gifted writer and family friend.
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The day Molly was born something ugly came to visit. Dad began to argue heatedly with Mom. He was furious that she hadn’t aborted the child; he didn’t want another mouth to feed. Mom’s love for him waned quickly. After Dad attacked Mom and sent her to emergency, they never again saw eye to eye on anything. Things worsened steadily. Dad’s estranged son, from his first marriage, was arrested transporting 5 kilos of heroin and, also, a cache of illegal weapons; he was sentenced to 25 years. The son blamed Dad and hated him for it. Dad imploded. He pulled down the shades and began boozing to cope. Within months he’d lost his job and status in the community. After that; darkness consumed Molly’s parents. Struggling to survive, Mom developed a deeply-rooted loathing for Dad that never subsided.
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Shortly after Molly’s second birthday, Mom and Dad divorced; the tapestry of everything they’d once been was frayed beyond recognition. The divorce was swift, heated, and ugly. Dad moved to Germany where an old girlfriend took him in. Mom and Molly headed west to the southern Oregon coast. Mom found a log home just above the Rogue River. She secured a job teaching English in the Junior High School in Coos Bay. She also found a small Christian fellowship on-fire with the spirit of the New Testament Philadelphian’s. After that life progressed normally and peace came to dwell with them. In her eighth year Molly began to excel, and her gift with words began flourishing. Many of their friends agreed that Molly must be protected from the ugly forces in this world that sought to destroy genuine gifts. So Mom, and several of her closest friends, accepted the responsibility.
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IN HER TEENS, Molly’s faith and creative writing became her defining features. Being a prayer warrior, as well, and given to visions and dreams, she often foresaw sweeping changes coming on the planet; a severe ‘dumbing down’ of the human family, spiritual darkness, bizarre sexual perversion, rampant drug use, analphabetism, a pandemic of corrupt publishing schemes, disingenuousness, hauteur, and an escalation of tribal hatred throughout the Middle East that would eventually result in the emergence of an autocratic world leader. One amazing dream she was given revealed an imminent disconnectedness between human beings because of an ‘electronic Frankenstein’ that was being created in computer science laboratories in the United States, Great Britain, and France. It was being referred to then as ‘packet networking’ and eventually would become widely known as the Internet. In her dreams and visions Molly foresaw a dark underbelly forming on the World Wide Web. She saw deception, rampant plagiarism, and an outgrowth of radical egoism driven by social-networking that would put into motion demonic forces that would induce sensitive people to take their own lives. Despite all the raw emotions, and sleepless nights, Molly’s dreams and visions turned out being the very inspiration she needed to start writing her first novel. Three months into her eighteenth year she began.
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IN HER TWENTIES Molly was focused, erudite, and adept at dealing with the untoward platitudes of literary lords and ugly-spirited competitors. Her closest friends began to speculate. Would she ever adopt elitist ways to help accomplish what she seemed destined for? Or would she protect and nurture her gifts and forge her own path? Despite the unknowns Molly’s inner circle continued to encourage her. One of her poet friends suggested that her watercraft must be fitted fittingly to maintain stability in a fouled sea of literary arrogance, and the deigning opinions of the intelligentsia. Molly and Mom laughingly agreed.
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IN HER THIRTIES Molly’s struggles and setbacks became paramount. Her Father was killed in a drunken brawl in a German bar, and, as it turned out, the critical success of her first work had made Molly a target for those looking for handouts and personal accreditation. The financial windfall from the novel had also allowed Mom to quit work and devote herself entirely to being Molly’s publicist and agent. Molly’s imagination was fully charged now and, because of it, she struggled for a season with fanciful thoughts and peculiar fears. Presuming there was little she could do to alter the politic ideologies that’d been espoused by the literary elite, Molly began fancying that if she protested too much, or if she was too out-spoken, that she might possibly be kidnapped for ransom and forced into a kind of life she didn’t want; perhaps as a redacting manuscript wench aboard a rat-ridden Barque on a seamy voyage to the Tuamotu Archipelago. Or, perhaps incarcerated on yet another Princess ‘Book Cruise’ where she could offer only a scrap of resistance in a place where the cries of her despondency’s fell on the waxy ears of readers given to the lunacies of blatant misinterpretation.
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Thankfully none of these fanciful reveries ever came to pass and she made it through a very peculiar season intact. Having been given more clarity about her life now, and knowing full well she could end up just another statistic, Molly began to understand that what she feared most was not the tangled opinions, negativity, or roadblocks she encountered. Nor was it the daunting countenances of those bigger-than-life writers that had become fat and complacent on uninspired thrones. Her biggest fear was simply her dread of not accomplishing what she’d been put on Earth to do. She was fully convinced that, despite any resistance she may encounter, she must run her course honorably and finish.
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IN HER EARLY FORTIES, Molly’s beloved Mom passed away. Several months after that her husband divorced her. The grief of loss, and the resultant depression, became her greatest challenges to date. To cope she flew up to Petersburg in Southeast Alaska and stayed with her Aunt and Uncle. Several months later she flew east across the mountains to the Yukon Territories and stayed in Whitehorse with friends. After a few weeks she rented a vehicle and traveled south, by herself, down through British Columbia to Kamloops. After a short stay in the hospital there, she took the train East through Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and into Ontario where she stayed on a farm with an author she’d known for years. After several months, finally feeling healed and ready to work again, she flew back to the cabin in Oregon and began to write feverishly. During the next ten year’s she wrote, and published, six novels, and numerous essays, poems, and articles about her Canadian travels.
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IN HER FIFTIES and SIXTIES, with the grace of a ballerina, the fervor of a Philadelphian evangelist, and the focus of a laser, Molly persevered most admirably in the world of words and established a legacy that would enrich and encourage the lives of all her readers.
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IN HER LATE SEVENTIES… After being honored for her many achievements, Molly was laid to rest. Leaving behind an oeuvre of wonderfully archetypal travelogues, poems, essays, and eight hard-fought novels, she became, for us, an enduring example of how a talented woman had accomplished her calling in spite of all the heartaches, tragedies, pitfalls, and dramas that could well have destroyed her.
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Richard L. Cederberg
2018
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The Portrayal Series: Poetiprose, or prose, insights concerning family and friends. Addressing also some of the actors, artists, musicians, and writers I associated with, or worked with, in college, or professionally, in my 20’s 30’s and 40’s. All of these individuals were influential in shaping the man I’ve become.
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never stop writing!
m
Thank you for sharing the most amazing life of Molly's! Her life is most inspiring!
Sandie
You have written a sterling biopic of this friend and author. But I'm disturbed by two things: I believe that she was part of a cult in Oregon because during her teens you write that she became very concerned and fearful about the way the world was going, something that religious cults foster with apocalyptic notions leading to the second coming of Christ. Second, I am disturbed because you did not name her. Perhaps because you expect that there might be repercussions from family and friends who might refute what you wrote about her. Apparently, among writers fighting for recognition, there is sometimes great animosity.
I'm glad I'm not in that vicious world of literary iconoclasts.
Ron