My need to reconnect

I have a special attachment to foods or memory of foods. Before science found a way to spoil my dinner, foods really tasted like food. I say this with nostalgia because I remember my childhood in Cebu. Our house was surrounded with fruit bearing trees and they grew and produced without any aid of fertilizer or pesticides. I remember fruits oozing of the ripe smell. We had several mango trees and to make them bloom, we would burn fresh tree leaves under them. To protect the fruits from insects, we wrapped them individually with used newspaper. We bought the newspaper from the rich people. When it was time to make the mangoes bloom, my dad and I would hike up to the mountain to cut down some trees for burning. We dry the lower trunk and use them for firewood and the upper trunk with fresh leaves to smoke the mangoes. I learned to transport them with my bare hands and pull them efficiently; hold on to the biggest trunk and piggy back the smaller ones on top. Those were special times with my dad because he would buy sweet bread for my lunch while his is the poor mans meal of rice wrapped in banana leaves. Also, along the way he would let me climb and pick up some wild berries. One particular berry is the "lomboy". It is violet with white flesh and a hard seed. When ripe it gets real dark in color, plump and sweet, but leaves your tongue dyed in black-purplish color.
Now, everytime I am in Cebu, I would try to find them in the street market but I seldom find them and when I do, they are not plump nor are they sweet. So are the mangoes. I look for them not to eat, but mostly out of longing for the past. The "lomboy" has become almost extinct, while the mangoes are now grown abundantly and made to produce commercially.
A lot of grocery stores in Dallas sells mangoes, but I don't usually buy them because they are not the same variety as the one's I was used to--they are fibrous and does not turn yellow orange in color. The Asian market carries the Philippine variety but they are expensive and I only want it more out of nostalgia than wanting to eat it.
I like to take long walks by the creek behind my apartment. Thick cluster of trees and bushes with berries unfamiliar to me meanders with the creek. I look up to God, thank Him, and I smile to myself. The sight is my opiate for the day -regardless that I come home with swollen eyes and raw nostrils from the allergens.
Whenever I pass by the display of mangoes in the store (even when I am not buying) subconsciously I always stop- to stare or to touch. It is nostalgia, but, I have this need of wanting to romanticize the past.