Dear Dad, I miss your pizzas

Dear Dad,

I miss your pizzas. The white one, that had splashes of olive oil and oregano on the puffy dough, a snow-fall of skinny onion slivers, and a salty top. The eggplant one, with a deep red homemade sauce, shreds of fresh cheese, and slices of the spongy vegetable. My boys prefer loads of cheese and dots of pepperoni, but we still use your pan. When I was a child and week after week I helped you shop and then cook pizzas, how could I know that someday – some unthinkable day when you were gone – I would wash our family pizza pan, and as the bubbles dissolved on the pan, and the deep grooves of a thousand pizza cutter marks display, I would cry happy tears remembering what a great man my father was. It is always in those small moments – the cutting, cutting, cutting and cutting of pizza slices – that the great things in life exist.

Love, 

Your Pizza-Making Daughter