I walked into our local pizzeria Proccolino’s the other day. If you ever come to Chestertown, you must go to Proccolino’s: the food is that good. While it’s true that I am not the world’s most reliable critic—given my well-documented and consistently low standards when it comes to ingestibles— I stand by my claim that Proc’s makes a damn fine piece of pizza. If you try and and do not like it, well, then I’m not sure we should be friends anymore.

In any case, there is a white, dry-erase sort of board just inside the door that usually announces various specials of the day. When I went into Proc’s last week, I saw this instead.

In the far back corner of the restaurant was Sal, one of the proprietors of the place. I pointed to the sign and then to him with a “Is Simona your daughter?” kind of look.

To which he responded with a, “You bet she is, and at this moment I’m so happy and proud that I can’t even make pizza,” kind of look.

I got my food, and on the way to my table, stopped to shake Sal’s hand.

I told him that I knew Middlebury well from my college admission officer days, that I knew it to be one of the best and most difficult colleges to get into in the entire country, and that Simona should be very proud of herself.

My words seemed to push Sal from merely happy to something like the ninth tier of elation.

“Look at this,” he said, handing me a piece of paper that he had been studying since I walked through the door.

It was a photocopy of Simona’s acceptance letter.

I read the first few lines and got the gist. I handed it back.

“No look at it,” he said. And so I did. I read the entire thing, word for word. It transported me back to that magical day more than 20 years ago, when I opened my mailbox and found a similar sort of letter.

That moment ranks up there with the birth of my kids as one of the best in my life.

It was a pleasure to be able to relive it through the rapturous expressions of a proud dad. 

I went back to my table and ate my pizza. It tasted even better than usual.