The tree at the end of my street.

I was getting in the car yesterday morning and I looked up.

The big rounded tree at the end of my street — full canopy, autumn coming in gold at the top. And something in my chest just... moved.

Totoro's tree, I thought. And then, quieter, before I'd even finished the thought:

I used to climb it. I forgot.

That's the thing about living where you grew up. The land holds memory you didn't know you'd dropped. You can walk past something a hundred times — head full of the weight of now, the list, the children, the work — and then one morning the light catches it differently and something old and rooted just looks back at you.

The tree remembered me. Even when I'd forgotten it.

I think this is what Maison Caché is trying to do, actually. Hold the things we've put down. The rituals we practised before we knew they were rituals. The girl who climbed things without thinking. The part of us that knew how to be feral and sacred at the same time, before someone taught us to be palatable instead.

You're not starting from nothing when you come here. You're remembering.