It's about nostalgia

I don't know at what age the remembered past begins to take on a rosy, golden hue, but I seem to have reached it. Early-onset nostalgia it might be, but it's still intermittent; I'm still living too much to focus on the past to the exclusion of other things. Besides, the past is a dangerous place, full of illusions and easy to get lost in.

Despite being too young for it, I recently had a bout of "looking back with longing." I went to San Jose for Easter with my brother and several friends. While there, vegetating in the peace of the Resurrection, we watched the three seasons of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" from start to finish in a two-day marathon stretch. I remember the first time I saw that show - some time after it aired in 2006 - and how delighted I was with the quality of the characters and the plotting. They took the story slowly, not rushing to great whiz-bang fight scenes (although there were plenty of those,) but taking time for smaller, slower episodes focused on developing the cast. Coupled with the fact that it was beautifully animated, "Avatar" routinely impressed me as a viewer. Besides, I liked the people in the story, and I really wanted them to succeed.

Going back over Easter, we skipped some of the "middle patches" to focus on the storyline; otherwise, we would never have been able to finish it in such a short amount of time. But even with the trimmed down version, I was reminded again how much I like the show. Only later, thinking about how crazy we were to finish the whole story in two days, did I begin to feel a little bittersweet. Seeing it for the second time made me think about how I had felt at the very beginning, when I didn't know how things ended or how the characters made it to the finish line. Everything was a surprise and mostly a delight on first viewing. It was still pleasant, but no longer surprising, and I found that I missed the first flush of joy that I experienced back then, maybe three years ago, when I made my little siblings (who were at a more proper age for "Avatar") wait for their college-sophomore brother to continue watching. Now I want to someday go back and watch the whole thing again, but slowly, savoring it the way I did back then, watching only one or two a day.

You can't go back, but you can remember, and make what you have already done into something new.