Growing up, calamansi was my favorite little fruit. My mom used in so many Pinoy dishes — in our house, there was always a bit of calamansi steeped in some soy sauce, or sprinkled over garlic rice. The fruit was so sweet, the pith so tart and slightly bitter. When we didn’t buy it from the Filipino grocery store, my mom would just pluck some kumquat from our backyard tree — deceptively similar but different. It didn’t matter; I loved how either would explode with electricity upon biting into them. The kumquat tree didn’t fruit year-round, but eventually it would and I’d happily grab the little fork-caged fruit picker and collect some of the thumb-sized, oblong fruits. We even had tangerines, and a lemon tree, which only ever produced one sad lemon in the entire decade we lived in that house. Scent is a time machine. Every time I smell a kumquat or a calamansi, a part of me returns to that bitter little house on Pepperwood, where I played with my brothers outside and …