Totoro is the friend you know was kind but can’t remember because you last saw him 25 years ago.
Totoro is the way you urgently stamped out your grandmother’s cigarette when she set it down on the wet grass for a brief look at your telescope.
Totoro is your mom laying a wet cloth on your forehead when you got a fever.
Totoro is your father teaching you how to use an axe and the fear in your heart when he hurt himself chopping down a tree.
Totoro is the way freshly mowed grass felt on your toes, wet and sticking and green and everywhere, before you could manage to cut the grass yourself.
Totoro is the first novel you read that pulled away from your wooden house and into someplace radically different.
Totoro is holding your little sister in your arms for the first time and every time you babysat her growing up.
Totoro is the dream from when dreams didn’t scare you awake night after night.
Totoro is the endless hours you spent with toys assembling worlds and backstories and motivations that didn’t require easy rationales.
Totoro is an hour and half where the cares of adulthood fall away, replaced by the joys and pains and sense memories of youth.
Totoro is a gift, and I cherish it.
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