The Kid from Delphine

Most people can't find it on the map, the town of Delphine. It gets lost along the state route and then you come to the next big town over, and you get distracted and forget what you were looking for to begin with.
There is only one gas station, and one grocery, and the post office is so small that come Christmas you can hardly get in the door because the whole damn town is trying to get in at the same time.
Everyone goes to buy their laundry detergent at the same place, and all of the kids have the same color folders and notebooks from the little bookstore on the corner, and you can only go to two services on Sundays...the eight o'clock at Freedom Baptist on First Street or the eleven o'clock at Greater Presbyterian on Main Street. Attendance at eleven is usually better.
Delphine has no great claim to fame. It is a small town that has always been small and will go on being small, at least through the foreseeable future.
That doesn't mean that everyone in Delphine is small town, don't be fooled.

He was born on June eleventh at the hospital  in the next big town over, and when he first opened his eyes his parents both said they seemed to sparkle, much brighter than the eyes you would expect of a newborn baby.
When he was two years old he won a contest at the nursery for "cutest baby," and his mother couldn't push his stroller down the street without at least a dozen folks stopping her to compliment her little boy and his sweet eyes.
When he was in kindergarten he insisted on joining the school choir, and while they never went anywhere the director recommended that he get singing lessons. He continued with lessons until he was twelve.
In eighth grade he had a brief stint modeling for the uniform store, and was featured in their mini catalog that season. That year he got so many love notes at school and letters at home and even phone calls that his parents briefly considered changing their phone number. But the next year he started high school in the next big town over that drew kids from all over the county and he blended in with the other good-looking teenagers and the letters and phone calls stopped.
He played soccer for a few months freshman year, before quitting the team and joining the chorus. He impressed the director so much that she started offering him solos and even booked him to sing the national anthem before football and basketball games.
Everything changed the day she recorded him at a regular chorus practice, in preparation for a  county competition. He never knew he was being recorded until later.

It was a normal Thursday afternoon and his mother was making a casserole with her special bean dip while his father worked on the backyard...just a few minutes before they sat down to dinner the doorbell rang.
On the front steps stood two representatives from Capital Recordings. They asked politely to speak with the young man in the house and without saying  too much popped the recording into the dvd player and there he was at chorus practice, his voice clear and strong and resonant, drawing you in. At the end of the two minute clip both of the representatives were sitting with elbows on their knees, leaning in toward the television, entranced. When the recording stopped they both seemed to shake themselves out of a daze and straightened their ties.
"That is not a talent you hear every day," Said one.
In two weeks they had negotiated a contract that allowed him to finish the year before going into the recording studio that summer, and by fall he was releasing his first album, which would go gold in just 9 months.

Fast forward three years, just after his nineteenth birthday in November.
He had finished high school on the road, leaving Delphine behind him to go to Atlanta and continue recording, hiring his cousin who majored in business and communications to be his manager and making contacts and deals while trying to get used to his  new celebrity. He had always been the cutie, the cute baby and the cute teenager, but after one year he couldn't even get a coffee without being mobbed. In an interview he speculated that it must be his "sparkling eyes," and hundreds of thousands of teen girls across the nation were inclined to agree. His hit single that came out in the following months and stayed on the charts for weeks was "Electric Eyes," much to his amusement. He played concerts in clubs, then special events, then was the opening act for a music tour with Soundstage Records and their golden artist, Mixx Magick, who was sitting at number two on the charts across the nation. After he finished recording his second album and it went platinum in seven months, he knew he'd hit it big. That summer he was on the road in his own bus, on his own tour, and he was the headline. Mixx Magick called to congratulate him.
Now he owned a condo in Atlanta and a little property in Miami, and paid off his parents' mortgage and treated them to a European tour for their twentieth wedding anniversary. He spent more time on the road than in the studio, and only made it back home for holidays.

As he turned off the state route and started down the quiet two lane highway his eyes fell on a sign half hidden by snow. "Delphine, 21 miles." His mouth turned up in a small smile and he admired the countryside covered in snow, the woodlands looming ahead and all the overhead branches covered by a layer of ice. Rolling into town he felt the memories flooding him...seeing the little candy store where he used to spend his allowance, the crosswalk that marked his route to school, the playground that he had donated to renovate, his grade school and the new arts wing attached to it bearing his name. Surrounded by all of the familiar streets and signs and buildings he felt like he was home, like the snow starting to fall from the quiet gray sky was the equivalent of confetti in a welcome home parade. So little had changed.
Pulling into his driveway he felt excitement coursing through him, doubled by the sight of his mother dropping the front curtain. While he got out of his car and brought in his small duffel bag he heard the front door open and there they stood, both his parents with happy anxious faces. They embraced him and he breathed in the familiar smell of his mother's perfume, the scent of apple pie cooling on the stove clinging to his father's sweater and broke into a wide smile. He was home.

No matter how far he had traveled, how much he had accomplished, this place would always be home. Settling down with a mug of hot chocolate and kicking off his Jordans and removing the tailored black leather bomber you could see in his sparkling eyes that he was still just a regular kid from Delphine, happy to be home for the holidays.