I discovered this week that there are lucky and unlucky foods to eat on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Don’t eat lobster or other crustaceans: they scuttle sideways, which could get you sidetracked in the year to come. Don’t eat winged fowl: your luck will fly away. DO eat salmon or tuna, fish that swim forward with purpose.

I’m adding cinnamon rolls as a lucky food for New Year’s Day. But my reasons depend on HOW you eat a cinnamon roll. There are a few different schools.

My son, 3, eats straight through, east to west. I discovered this on Christmas morning when he devoured one of the batch I made for breakfast.

I’m more of an unroller. Start with the thick strip of pastry at the end of the roll and unwind inward. The density of cinnamon and sugar in its buttery base increases as the diameter of the roll decreases until you reach those last two perfect bites in the center. Add a dab of butter to the last bite for a few moments of true perfection.

I learned (or maybe invented) this technique when I was a child myself, eating my mother’s homemade cinnamon rolls at our scratched up kitchen table. It’s not just a pastry, it’s a puzzle. A perfect shape, an anticipation that requires complete concentration. The activity of eating a cinnamon roll seemed to me as a kid the opposite of eating an ice cream cone, where the first bit off the top or lick on the side is always the best part. A cinnamon roll gets better with each bite.

Without realizing it, cinnamon rolls have recently become for me an unspoken, unfulfilled craving. While living in Cambridge, Mass., City of Many Excellent Bakeries, I spotted several good looking cinnamon rolls, but it was never the right moment. Then at times when I really could use a big old cinnamon roll (like the hour after finishing a marathon – it’s got to be nature’s perfect recovery food) there was not a roll in sight.

I’ve also had a few disappointments, where I went for it at a bakery and the cinnamon roll wasn’t what I was expecting. Usually too sweet, too sticky. My ideal cinnamon roll is not blanketed with frosting but rather subtly sweet, depending on the spice rather than sugar to make it taste good. Oh, and it’s whole wheat. In other words: there’s nothing like Mom’s recipe.

I have a long history of really screwing up rising breads, so I was apprehensive to try to bake them myself. But the craving was strong enough this year that I decided to try. I asked my mother for her recipe and she emailed it to me. Then I called her when my first steps didn’t seem to be working out (The dough is just sitting there! Did I kill my yeast already?!)

Mom patiently talked me through it. My excitement grew with every sign of progress: the yeast formed gluten bands; the lump of dough rose in the fridge overnight; the shaped and sugared rolls puffed perfectly in the buttered pan before I baked them Christmas Eve.

Eating my own homemade cinnamon roll, outside edge to fragrant center, on Christmas morning was truly a rare instance of anticipation achieved. It was delicious.

There was also bacon on the table, but who cares?

I ate the last cinnamon roll of the batch this morning. It was hardly the ideal setting for concentrating on that spiral delight – I was driving my car, running an errand with my kid in the back seat. I was trying to answer his questions about dinosaurs. I was famished after a 12 mile run. And I was suffering guilt for hiding this precious last roll from my kid, who’d asked for one earlier. (“Sorry, sweetie, I’ll make more for tomorrow!”)

But between stop lights and explanations of dinosaur footprints, I unwound the cinnamon roll. The last bite was every bit as delicious as I remember from childhood.

Eaten in a spiral, cinnamon rolls represent, for me, sticktuitiveness and enjoying the fruits of hard labor. Also honoring the past and personal taste memories. And most of all, a cinnamon roll represents forward motion, but in a circle, the way life often moves. Circling back to the same points in time, space and experience but with a slightly new perspective. With luck and concentration, getting better with every bite.

That is, if you eat it in the proper way. Of course you can be like my kid and chomp right through.