Every single Sunday morning of my childhood was spent at church.

I sang in the children’s choir beginning in the 3rd grade and we would sing most Sundays at the 9 am mass which meant my parents would corral four children in the wee hours of the morning, making sure we had some cereal in our tummies and were dressed appropriately, herd us into the minivan and drive to church which was luckily only five minutes away. If we had to sing in the choir, we had to be there at 8:30 which meant my dad would drop me and my sister off early and then save a pew and sit and read the bulletin with his reading glasses perched on his nose and wait for my mother to join him with my two brothers.

Gathering us all together and getting us to church on time was no easy feat as my sister was usually crying about her tights being itchy or how my mother was brushing her hair too hard or how she hates pink today and my mom would snap at her to please stop whining and just get dressed and get in the car. (My Mother 20 Years Later: I THINK YOUR SISTER MAYBE HAD ONE OF THOSE SENSORY ISSUES EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT NOWADAYS? I FEEL KIND OF BAD ABOUT HOW OFTEN I YELLED AT HER BUT HEY THAT’S WHAT THERAPY IS FOR, RIGHT?)

My older brother Paul was already starting, at the age of 10 or so, to think that church was a bunch of garbage and besides, he’d much rather sleep. My parents would often have to wake him up six or twelve times, going into his room the first few and then finally just yelling from the bottom of the stairs PAUL! SERIOUSLY! GET!!! UP!!! before they would hear the bathroom door close and the shower turn on which meant he was actually somewhat alert.

(Paul told me awhile ago that he was pretty certain he was a staunch atheist by the time he hit 8th grade, a position he hasn’t budged from since regardless of the fact that my mom mandated he attend church until the age of 18, which he mostly did except for those few times he slept through it and promised to go later to the parish a few towns over which had late Sunday mass but then he would drive to the Starbucks that had just opened up and kill an hour or so before returning home. Speaking of which, to this day he cannot function early in the morning without approximately 12 cups of coffee so basically what I’m saying is kids don’t change much.)

My brother Jeremy was just a baby around this time so I imagine there were multiple awesome experiences involving putting on all his clothes and shoes for him and strapping him in a car seat and wiping his nose a hundred times and then dealing with him spitting up all over himself or whatever it is that parents deal with.

Interesting to note that anytime I raise a question to my parents of HOW ON EARTH DID YOU DO THAT FOUR CHILDREN THING AND NOT GO INSANE?, they don’t even seem to know or care.

Mostly they think everything that was stressful at the time is hilarious now.

“REMEMBER THAT CRAZY STOMACH VIRUS WE ALL GOT FOR LIKE TWO WEEKS?! OH MAN, GOOD TIMES! KIDS ARE GREAT!”

They just sort of say things like OH SURE IT WAS HARD WORK BUT YOU GUYS WERE SO FUN!

And then my mother usually adds WE SHOULD HAVE HAD ONE MORE! I REALLY THINK FIVE WOULD’VE BEEN GOOD.

But if my mother had had twelve of us, she probably would say the same thing. THIRTEEN! SHOULDA DONE THIRTEEN!

The point of the story is that Sunday mornings for me meant getting in the minivan, singing in the choir which I loved loved loved and then heading down to the church basement for the bagel breakfast.

The bagel breakfast was only offered after the 9 am mass, an activity meant to foster community and gather families together. It mostly worked. Basically adults got to chug lots of coffee and mingle and their kids could smear cream cheese all over their face and just run around screaming and bumping into things because where are crazy loud kids more welcome than at a Catholic church!? Instead of the usual societal attitude of PLEASE SHUT YOUR KID UP AND GET IT AWAY FROM ME, everyone at my church was basically like OH MAN, LOU’S LITTLE GIRL JUST RAN HEADFIRST INTO THAT MARY STATUE AGAIN AND IT SHATTERED AND THEN SHE THREW UP ALL HER CHEERIOS! KIDS ARE THE BEST, RIGHT GUYS!!?!?

My friend L who had a last name that sounded kind of like broccoli was a hyper child and we would hang out and eat bagels and sit on these carpeted steps and talk about which boys we thought were cute. L. Broccoli would often linger too long by the coffee table, either trying to sneak coffee (at the age of 9) or conduct experiments like how many Sweet N Lows she could dump in her orange juice and still drink it. (I believe the record was something like 22.)

My mother loved the bagel breakfast because she could hang out with all her friends and talk and talk and talk plus eat a bialy. My dad was not a particular fan of the bagel breakfast for the exact same reason: my mother would talk and talk and talk and he kind of just wanted to go home and read the paper. He would try to be social but really he was just too shy so he would come hang out with me and L. Broccoli. He would sip his coffee, check his watch a few hundred times and finally say something like WE TOOK TWO CARS SO…YOU TINK YOUR MUTHA WOULD BE MAD AT ME IF WE LEFT?

We usually said no even if the answer was sometimes yes and my siblings and I would pile into the car with my dad and head home. I would sit next to him at the kitchen table and read the comics and then the Dear Abby column which I particularly loved, until my mom walked in the door, sometimes a few minutes later, sometimes over an hour.

“I HAD THE GREATEST TALK WITH ANN MARIE!” she’d say (or FATHER TOM or THAT GUY WE KNOW WHOSE KID HAD LEUKEMIA BUT HE WAS CURED BUT IT MIGHT COME BACK HOW SAD IS THAT!?) and hang her purse on a doorknob. Then she’d kick her heels off, ask for a section of the newspaper and lay down on the couch reading which only lasted a few minutes because then she’d fall asleep, glasses perched on her nose.

I thought of these Sunday mornings recently when I grabbed a bagel from the cafeteria at my job. I’ve had bagels since childhood obviously but for some reason this one triggered the memory and after just one bite, it all came flooding back to me. The shrieks of the kids running around the church basement, the muffled sound of the organ playing from the mass upstairs, my dad wearing a tie and his dress up shoes, hearing my mom’s voice in the sea of people HI! HI! HI!, her loud cackle when someone made her laugh, L. Broccoli dumping Sweet N Lows in her orange juice, the taste of my poppy seed bagel with cream cheese, a strong sense of comfort and belonging.

Maybe I like to eat bagels sometimes because New York bagels are the best ever.

Or maybe I like to eat them because they, like so many things, remind me of home.