I have always been sensitive to smells and tastes, but this was too much.

On a four day getaway with my husband in NYC, the city of my girlhood, I sat down to a sesame bagel with scallion cream cheese. I took the first bite–soft, chewy, crispy, nutty,  creamy, tangy, sharp.

I burst into tears.

Covering my face with my hands, my sobs alternated with laughing. Shock. Shame. To be so flooded with memories at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning in midtown.

Fresh bagels were the central experience of my childhood. At least once a week, usually on the weekends, my dad would roll out of bed or return from a late night at the hospital with a bag of bagels.

I would eat these bagels untoasted–who needs to toast when the bagels are already hot from the oven? Schmeared with veggie cream cheese, draped with nova or with the creamed onions from pickled lox, the bagels of my childhood were not yet adulterated with jalapeno, asiago, chocolate chips, or a rainbow of food coloring. The most radical bagel was a cinnamon raisin, but that had its time and place.

My childhood memories center around my parents’ round butcher block table, the surface slightly sticky from the Long Island humidity. The walls, hung with fruited wallpaper, a change from the original 1960s geometric mirrors, even on the ceiling, held the busy home phone, its back curved like a sleeping infant. Clad in my flannel nightgown, tucked into a wicker chair pushed back against the wall, the floor board heating tick, tick, ticking against a winter chill, I would join my siblings for a Saturday morning bagel. Even forty years later, I see everything—the white of our “dairy” dishes, the drops of orange juice splashed onto the woven placemats, the cut up fruit or onion or occasional tomato to dress things up. My parents rushing about—there were four of us children in the house—I don’t remember seeing either of them sit down. My siblings and I would squabble, fight over the comics section in Newsday. Someone would inevitably stomp away from the table, up the short stairway of the split level, slamming a bedroom door. Satiated with bagels, I might drift upstairs for homework, my little sister downstairs to watch Muppet Babies.

Birthdays and holidays like Mother’s day and Father’s day were celebrated over bagels, from Bagel Boss or Bagel Bob’s or any other of the many bagel spots in town. My grandparents might drive out from Sheepshead Bay to join us for bagels. Maybe my aunt and uncle and cousins would join too, picking up a box of cookies or a cheese fluff from Walls Bakery on Broadway.

Rosh Chodesh at Hewlett East Rockaway Jewish Center Religious school, under the enthusiastic guidance of Principal Mordechai Mafouda, involved a monthly bagel celebration. At the end of a two hour class on Sunday (another two hour session on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday), someone would stop by the classroom with a large brown bag of hot bagels. There were paper plates and napkins, and the choices were Temptee cream cheese or, even better, Breakstone’s whipped salted butter. A smear of salted butter on a salted bagel. No midwestern cinnamon roll can compete.

The faces of my Hebrew school classmates are a blur. I remember some of their English names—Lisa Sklar, Danny Epstein (could there have been two Danny Epsteins? Or just two Dannys?)—and I remember some of their Hebrew names, Shmuel, Shlomo, Leah, Daniel, Daveed. But the bagels I remember with crystal clarity. The pull, the chew, the litter of everything seasoning on your lap. Writing about them, I can feel the damp heat of the paper bag, the saliva collecting in my mouth in anticipation of the reward, earned only because it was a new month.

Living in the Jewish Diaspora of the midwest for eighteen years, I have forgotten what a real bagel is about. Sure, I would let Evelyn, my grad school bestie, coax me to Brueggers during our office hours where we would swill hazelnut creme coffees and get bagels with butter. And I have even sunk to the level of buying Lender’s bagels or the store brand (I have no brand loyalty). There have even been a few places in Grand Rapids that purport to have “real “bagels. GR Bagels, Bagel Kitchen, Terra Bagels, you have filled a bagel shaped hole in my heart, but after visiting New York, these circles of dough hold no power for me.

Part of the issue is that none of these places do enough volume to serve up truly fresh hot bagels. I sometimes wonder if the bagels I’m eating are from the day before and not just hours old. My preference for fresh hot bagels reminds me that perhaps all of our bread should be eaten fresh, that living in this processed food world of old cold bread sitting in plastic on our grocery shelves has shifted my gaze from the truest form of carbohydrate love–the fresh hot bagel.

The hustle of adult life lifts the veil on the magic of childhood. Void of my father’s good humor, I don’t want to wake up any earlier than I do on a Saturday or Sunday. For whom would I roll out of bed to fetch the bagels? Two of my three children have moved out. My third child, at fifteen, is in the “I’m not hungry for breakfast” phase of life. My husband would prefer Grapenuts.

When I took a bite of the bagel at New York Bagel and Coffee, I was flooded with a million memories of bagels past. It was a version of Rachel Lutwick–this is your life. And this year I have been married to my husband for twenty-five years. I have lived away from my childhood home for thirty-two years. Eating that bagel was a flashback to the life I had before I went to college, to grad school, got married, became a mother. It’s hard to remember that I was that girl sitting at the table eating bagels, kicking my brother under the table.

Rachel Lutwick-Deaner has been teaching college composition for over twenty years. She has lived in many regions of the country, from California to the New York island, and she currently resides in Grand Rapids, Mich. You can find her on Instagram: @professorld.