Recovering the Irrecoverable

I grew up in a place full of mango trees of a rare species I have never seen again. They were large, turgid, and had the particularity that they never ripened. Without fear of being wrong, I can say that during the twenty-eight years I lived in that place, I ate unripe mango every single day of my life. As if the load of acidity were not enough, I bathed them in lemon, pepper, and salt. Of course, my gums became sensitive, and now I cannot tolerate them; however, I keep buying them. I suppose I like to see them in the fruit bowl, as if by doing so, I could go back more than thirty years and sit again on the garden steps with my siblings when life was easy and we were whole.