Dedication Deciphering

Adam Gopnik. Winter: Five Windows on the Season. The Massey Lectures.

For Gudrun Bjerring Parker

Filmmaker, feminist, lover of the world,
woman of the north,
who raised and loved and nurtured and then
let go of my own true love,
and, knowing too well how Demeter felt, never let her heart
grow cold to the borrower.

There is a lot packed into this little sequence shifting from the factual to the mythic. And it all falls into place for this bewildered reader when some helpful soul points out somewhere on the World Wide Web that the dedicatee is the author's mother-in-law. And now one appreciates the statement that is being made by the reference to borrowing.

And so for day 963
02.08.2009