Gooseberries!
Consider the elusive gooseberry. I remember the gooseberry bush my father had in our backyard during my youth. Growing from nastily prickly branches of its bush, these delicious berries have an unforgettable taste like no other. They are like errant grapes with serious attitude. They are not found everywhere and can be purchased just about nowhere. I think the last time I had them was when I found some for sale at a Seattle produce stand in 1978. They were long gone from our property when my sister inherited part of the land and built next door.
When chatting with my sister today about things past, the topic of gooseberries came up, as it is wont to do between siblings, and she pointed out a bush on her land that has been growing for several years after having been buried. I'll be damned! I ate a few and am saving some for tomorrow morning's cereal. Like Proust's madeleine, the taste of those berries evokes memories of the past; well, it evokes memories of that taste, unforgotten, but long unsavored, like a monk getting laid again after an adulthood of celibacy. "Oh yeah, I remember now, that's what it was like!"
I am not Proust, and I will not bore you with six volumes of À la recherche des groseilles à maquereau perdues. Instead I offer you a couple of fresh photos of those little treasures.
EDIT. Anton Chekhov on gooseberries:
"But the point just now is not he, but myself. I want to tell you about the change that took place in me during the brief hours I spent at his country place. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook put on the table a plateful of gooseberries. They were not bought, but his own gooseberries, gathered for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nikolay Ivanovitch laughed and looked for a minute in silence at the gooseberries, with tears in his eyes; he could not speak for excitement. Then he put one gooseberry in his mouth, looked at me with the triumph of a child who has at last received his favourite toy, and said:
" 'How delicious!'"