This is Women’s History Month, which I confused with International Women’s Day, which I missed.  But today should be Gwendolyn Soper Day, and as far as I’m concerned, it is.  I am wishing a Happy Birthday to my beautiful, talented, thoughtful friend, Gwendolyn.  I love her and am in awe of her, and I’m so touched that she chose to be my friend. And I don’t think that I should have to wait until she makes history to make a public tribute to her.  

Gwendolyn and I came to know each other online in 2020 because of my husband’s project on Facebook, The Poetry Broadcast. Gwendolyn and I became friends pretty much right away. She’s one of those people you instantly recognize as The Real Deal. And over these past three years, our friendship has grown.

We have bonded over a few things, not the least of which was having to meet our newborn grandchildren through glass because of Covid.  Gwendolyn sent me a video her husband, Stan, took of her standing outside a hospital looking at her newborn granddaughter Mabel being displayed for her by her parents behind a window, and I was in tears.  She turned around, and she was in tears.  Moments like that are when you know you’re going to love this friend forever.  Moments like that are when you realize how important friendships with other women are, because they know what you know.  

The first time Gwendolyn and I met in person was at the home of our mutual friends, Steve and Kathy Peterson, in Spring City, Utah, where the Sopers also live. Gwendolyn and I were both in tears again.  A year and a half later, when my grandson Lorenzo turned two, Gwendolyn and Stan brought their granddaughter Mabel (just a bit older than Lorenzo) to his party in Salt Lake City.  Having her and her granddaughter at a family birthday party felt so right.  This is my friend, Gwendolyn. She belongs here.

There are many things Gwendolyn and I haven’t bonded over (because they are things SHE does and I can’t or don’t or didn’t do); among them are singing opera (!!!), running a farm, and being a finalist for the NORward Prize (for her poem, “What’s With All These Foxes,” also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poem), compiling a playlist on YouTube, The Poetry Broadcast 2020, of the jazz Billy played on The Poetry Broadcast early on, and starting an online group, The Cool People, the Night People, for poetry people around the world who spent a half hour each day during lockdown watching The Poetry Broadcast and then discussing poetry and life with each other afterward (there are almost 700 people in that group, still, and they will continue to exist with or without the broadcast).  

Gwendolyn is a “new” poet, having picked up her pen sometime around the beginning of Covid, if I am correct. (Read one of those early poems, “Keeping Tabs.”) She has proven herself to be one of those people writing poetry who really has something to offer in the way of craft and substance, someone who SHOULD be writing poetry. She’s industrious, to say the least, and creative, and she cares about details and nuance and learning and the entire conversation going on that is poetry.  I predict that she is a woman who will make history with her poems.  What she is writing is important. She has moved far beyond merely closing tabs. She is examining the past, and she is opening up to a new future.

And as if writing good poems isn’t enough, Gwendolyn is now simultaneously finishing the last ten courses for her bachelor’s degree while pursuing an MFA in Writing at Pacific University.  Yes!  She’s good enough that she has been allowed to tackle that challenge.  And she’s more than up for it. Gwendolyn is one of those women who, as a grandmother (of five!), is launching herself into a whole new world.

Maybe it’s even more meaningful to say that Gwendolyn is a mother (of three), because as I well know, as mothers we struggle, we work, we put our whole selves into it and then wonder if it was enough.  (It was. We are. We have to remind ourselves of that now.) Being a grandmother is “merely” a chance to live the good times with these little people. 

But being at an age where one is a grandmother is generally accepted as the time of life when we can coast.  Not so with Gwendolyn.  I have a feeling she has never coasted. 

Is there such a thing as a perfect day?  Gwendolyn reminded me that there is.  For us, it was November 13, 2023.  We bounced around Kauai with our husbands in my red rented Jeep.  Billy did an oceanside pop-up for The Poetry Broadcast with Gwendolyn and Stan. (I was behind the camera).  At Kilauea Lighthouse, we made a video for The Petersons (“Wish you were here, friends”). Perhaps the high point was flying kites on Hanalei Beach.  (The Sopers think of everything.) 

And at the end, we made a mad dash for a jewelers at Poipu Beach, where we’d seen the turtles come ashore at dusk the night before with a group of writer friends.  Billy and I were in rush to get to the airport, but the plumeria necklace I’d chosen at my birthday present was there in Poipu.  We ended up getting to the airport on time, and a couple of days later, Stan bought Gwendolyn a special piece of jewelry at Poipu.  (Another thing we have in common.)

All of this is to say that I am grateful for the new friends who come my way, and I am so very happy to celebrate Gwendolyn and all she is and has done and will do on today, Gwendolyn Soper Day, during Women’s History Month.