Why does nostalgia taste so bad??

One might think that lemon cookies are straight-forward, that either one wants them, or one does not.

One would be wrong.

Lemon cookies make me think of home.

I always ate lemon cookies in my room, curled up on the floor, working on homework.

When I smell them, I hear, as though off in the distance, the Van Morrison CD I played on loop, I feel the floor beneath my fingers, the smoothness of algebra running through my brain, I hear the rain dripping on the roof.

I love all these things, but I still hate how lemon cookies taste.