Revisiting childhood

It seems to me that in the past few days I've been revisiting my childhood, so to speak. I've discovered a channel called Boomerang that airs cartoons I used to watch when I was about ten years old or so; I found the Marcel Marlier-illustrated books I used to read when I was five; and I just discovered that one of my favorite books as a child -- the 'What Katy Did' series by Susan Coolidge -- has two more books to end the tale. I've been totally immersed in those for the last few days.
I'd known about Boomerang -- that is to say, I knew there was a channel out there, a spin-off from Cartoon Network, that aired all those old Cartoon Network shows that I used to watch after I came home from school. The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Space Ghost, Dino Boy, Josie and the Pussycats, The Centurions, and, my personal all-time favorite, Jonny Quest. I was thrilled to discover that these were the classic episodes of Jonny Quest, the one where he was a tiny 11-year-old boy travelling around the world with his father, fighting bad guys. When I was 10, the episodes used to transport me into another world, an exciting world filled with gadgets (I used to find gadgets fascinating even back then!), bad guys, lots of action, and a bodyguard to take care of it all for you. And science -- lots and lots of science. Science that I thought would seem antiquated to me now, but strangely enough, it doesn't. There's a lot of gadgets shown in the show that we still haven't invented. Is that cool or what?
The only thing that used to irk me about the show was the inaccurate portrayal of India, or more accurately, Calcutta. My grandmother lives in Calcutta, and I've been there several times -- and while I wasn't around in 1964, which is when the show is from, I seriously doubt Calcutta ever looked like that, with dome-topped structures and snake charmers everywhere. It was the former capital of India -- if anything, I'm sure the architecture was more Victorian than Mughal. And even if it was, there was no way it was so in 1964. No way. Calcutta is one of the largest cities in India, and it was most certainly not filled with palaces and mystical Morrocan buildings in '64. But I digress.
Strangely, that little annoyance from my childhood didn't seem to annoy me now. I watched it more with amusement than with the indignation of childhood. I guess I don't take it as seriously any more. But I am so glad I've found the series again. Yes, I do have the DVD, but there's a certain charm in watching it on TV -- being able to watch only one episode at a time, interspersed with commercial breaks. It feels more real.
The funniest thing was, even as I watched the show again, I forgot all about my life -- work, and responsibilities, and even the fact that I had to go to work the next day! -- and totally felt transported to the mystical forests of Ashida, filled with dragons that eat humans. I actually felt horror every time the Quests were foiled. And when the show ended, I was surprised to discover, that even after fifteen years, it still got my heart pounding. I suppose I'm still a child at heart!
Another thing I found over the weekend was the Marcel Marlier-illustrated books I used to read when I was five. I 'found' them on Amazon, actually. To be honest, I was amazed they were available at all. I immediately placed orders for copies of Debbie's Dream, Debbie Learns To Cook, Debbie's Visit To The Countryside, Debbie's Birthday Party, and Mark And Michelle In The Forest. My mother used to read them to me when I was a child. I used to follow the stories with rapt attention, and since I couldn't read when I was a baby, I used to make up my own stories with the illustrations, which were gorgeous. If the story said that Debbie was ill and fell asleep, I made up my own back story, of how she didn't want to sleep, but her friends all came over and tired her out with their tales, and she did go to sleep then. If the story said simply that she dreamt, I put all kinds of details into her dream, anything I could come up with, simply looking at the illustrations. I loved those books. As I grew older and learned to read, I read the words along with looking at the illustrations; but what do you know? The story had lost part of its charm! Even now, I look at the illustrations more closely than the story itself, and hope that someday, if I have a little girl of my own, I will read to her the story, and maybe make up my own 'illustration story', just like my mother did to me!
The last blast from the past this weekend was my beloved 'Katy' series. I don't know how popular the series is here in the States; but it is apparently very popular in England, which was why we had a couple of extracts from it as chapters in our English textbook when I was a kid. I was always fascinated by the large family that Katy had (in fact, the first time I read an extract, I didn't have any siblings; my sister wasn't born till I was almost eight). I finally found the entire book, What Katy Did, on the floating bookstore, MV Doulos. That in itself was quite an adventure. I remember my father coming home, all excited, with the flyer announcing that the MV Doulos had anchored at the Prince's Dock in Bombay. It was a little way out from our suburban home, but we went there anyway. Just the fact of being in a bookstore that would actually be somewhere else entirely in a week, and had been in several places and countries I could only dream about, excited my childish imagination terribly. It seemed like a real-world manifestation of Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series which I adored. The top of the tree would be in different lands each week, and this 'bookstore' seemed to me to be the same. From between the aisles, I could see out the porthole, and into the vast sea. It was so terribly exciting! That remains one of my favorite adventures ever. I remember picking up What Katy Did and Oliver Twist and The Swiss Family Robinson; there were others, but I don't remember. I was disappointed when we had to leave. For a child whose biggest trip alone seemed to be to the school, this trip seemed to have all the magic and adventure of travelling to a foreign and strange land.
But I digress. It was here, on this ship, that I first started reading my beloved Katy series. The stories, What Katy Did, What Katy Did At School, and What Katy Did Next basically followed the oldest child of the Carr family, Katy. Katy grew up in the Midwest, in a town called Burnet, with her widower papa, her strict aunt Izzie, and her siblings -- Clover, Elsie, Dorry, Joanna "Johnnie", and little Phil. Also part of the children's group was their next-door neighbor, Cecy Hall. The seven children would often go out into the nearby woods, or into the loft, or some other exciting place, and have the most exciting time, imagining themselves to be in some mystical place, with magical powers (like 'Paradise'). It excited my childish imagination tremendously; the fact that Katy was so near my own age made me associate even more with her (though I was the age of the next sister, Clover, when I began reading the series). Katy's wild imagination, tomboyish nature and love for reading made me associate with her in a way I had never associated with anyone else my own age. I had newly moved to Bombay, and didn't have any close friends; and my sister, then two, was too young to be enrolled in my schemes. I used to create my own fantastical world, and, thinking that the underside of the study table was my hidden 'cave', I would fortify myself with candy and water, and pretend that I was marooned on an island and hiding from wild beasts, and read the books sitting in my 'cave'. It was great fun. As I grew older, I collected other stories from the series. Next was What Katy Did At School, an exciting story about Katy and Clover being sent to Hillsover to a boarding school the other girls called the 'Nunnery'; this made me also want to go to a boarding school. The fun of being with so many other girls, having secret societies with meetings, awaiting letters from the family...this seemed very exciting to me back then. Finally came What Katy Did Next, which I acquired in the eighth grade. This was the story where Katy travels all over Europe with the widowed Mrs Ashe and her daughter Amy, and falls in love with Mrs Ashe's younger brother, Ned Worthington. I loved that book, first for the travelling aspect (even at thirteen, I knew I was going to travel a lot one day!) and then as I grew older, the love story part. But as far as I knew, that was the final installment of the series. So imagine my delight when I discovered that there were two more books in the series -- Clover, and In The High Valley. I read Clover with great gusto yesterday, and have just began In The High Valley now. At the beginning of Clover was the wedding of Katy Carr! My Katy, one of my best friends through my childhood, was now married! It was like the conclusion of an epic. And when I read about the sorrow of Elsie and Clovy, and the rest, and Cousin Helen coming home to find all her child-cousins grown up now, and Katy getting married in the same parlour her Aunt Izzie used to look after -- it just felt, I don't know, satisfying. The Katy story has reached closure in my book.
Apt, wasn't it? Katy Carr Worthington almost literally grew up with me. And thus, I had a very nostalgic weekend, revisiting my childhood's most precious moments.