You are learning storytelling craft: you will read the scene it happens in, learn 10 words and phrases, take apart the pattern behind them (storytelling craft: setup, rising action, turning point, resolution), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.
Di Fara Pizza, Midwood, Brooklyn, watching Dom DeMarco make pies
My father grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn. Every Sunday, his family would walk to Di Fara Pizza on Avenue J. He told me about it so many times that the place became a myth — somewhere between a restaurant and a church. When he passed away three years ago, I promised myself I would go.
I took the Q train to Avenue J on a cold Saturday in February. The line stretched down the block. Two hours, someone said. I waited. My feet were numb. The wind cut through my jacket. I almost left twice.
And then I saw him. Dom DeMarco, in his eighties, standing behind the counter. He was making each pizza himself — stretching the dough by hand, layering the mozzarella with fingers that had done this exact motion for sixty years. He cut fresh basil with scissors. He drizzled olive oil from a can. No one rushed him. No one could.
When my slice arrived — thin, blistered, perfect — I took a bite. And that's when everything changed. I wasn't eating pizza. I was eating my father's memory. I was standing where he had stood. The tears came before I could stop them. The woman next to me smiled. 'First time?' she asked. 'No,' I said. 'I've been coming here my whole life. I just didn't know it yet.'