a page from Davita's Harp

Today I am reading Davita’s Harp. I’ve read it before and think it is one of the most beautiful books. I loved this exchange between Davita and her parents (mostly her mother) over the word “idea.” This is near the beginning. Davita is somewhere between five and eight years old at this point in the book. Sorry, the paragraph formatting won't read, so I've improvised.

In the morning over breakfast I asked my mother what the word idea meant.

“That’s a good one,” my father said cheerfully, looking up from his newspaper. “Work on that one, Annie. That’ll keep you busy for a while.”

“Your eggs are getting cold, Michael.”

He put down the paper. I saw his name beneath the headline on the right-hand column of the front page: Michael Chandal.

“I heard you using idea last night, Mama.”

“Don’t you ever sleep, my love? You’re acquiring my bad habits, becoming a night person. Beware of the night people, Davita. Avoid us like the plague.”

“I’ll try to explain idea to you, Ilana. Eat your cereal while I talk.”

The word idea, she said, came from an old word that originally meant to see. An idea was something that existed in a person’s mind. It could be a thought, an opinion, a fantasy, a plan of action, a belief. It used to mean an image in the mind, a picture of someone or something, a likeness. But no one used it that way anymore.

“Davita, my love, did we understand any of that?” my father asked genially.

“Mama, is what you call Stalinism an idea?”

My father stopped chewing and looked at me.

“Yes,” my mother said, smiling faintly.

“Is my being cold in bed at night an idea?”

“No, darling. That’s a feeling.”

“That’s an exploiting capitalist landlord, is what that is.”

“Is when I hear the door harp an idea?”

“No, darling. That’s hearing. That’s one of your senses, like seeing and touching and smelling. An idea is in your mind, your head. When you think about the door harp, it’s an idea.”

“When I think about the cottage and the beach and the ocean, is that an idea?” I had suddenly remembered the seaside world where we spent our summers.

“Yes, Ilana.”

“Do ideas become dead, like people and animals and birds?”

“Sometimes.”

I sat at the table in our small kitchen and gazed at the pale winter sunlight that shone through the window.