Delphi

It is not the Whittingham Drive Belknaps who interest me.

I am not interested in “typical” Delphites.

They are a dime a dozen.

What does interest me is the Dover Road Belknaps.

I am always interested in anyone who is extraordinary. Or out of the ordinary.

When the “ordinary” is like the Whittingham Drive Belknaps, then – trust me! – anything different suddenly attracts your attention.

To be honest, I have known Kaitlin Belknap since she was a little girl. Like myself, she is a native Delphite, born right here in our local, hillside hospital. Although she is much younger than I am.

I watched her grow up. Knew her mother quite well.

Kaitlin grew up here, went off to college, got married. And moved elsewhere. Not atypical, really, for a lot of Delphi children.

But then she moved back. With her young son, Conrad, named after Kaitlin’s father. To look after her mother, unexpectedly diagnosed with lung cancer. I say unexpectedly because Diane never smoked a day in her life.

It was one of those fluke things. Sudden. Out of the blue. And right when Diane was starting to get on her feet again, after Conrad’s passing. From a heart attack. Now, he was a heavy smoker. Not unlike many of his generation. But kind of makes you wonder if all that second hand smoke isn’t what got Diane in the end.

But who knows? Life’s a mystery. You can lead a healthy lifestyle and keel over while riding your bike down Main Street, just as easily as the chain-smoking alcoholic can live to be a hundred.

Well, I may be exaggerating a tad. But you know what I mean. Life is not always logical. It doesn’t always make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Diane didn’t live very long. Diagnosed around Thanksgiving, gone by Easter. Kaitlin came here, naively, right around Christmastime, with her young son, for what she thought was only going to be a few months, to help her mom through chemo and whatnot.

Kaitlin had listened to her mom, maybe because she didn’t want to believe the worst, and didn’t think the cancer was all that serious at first. After all, can’t they usually cure cancer these days, especially when it’s caught early?

Kaitlin moved back in the end, though -- in my opinion – in order to move away from her husband.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Kaitlin cared about her mother dearly. But Diane would never have asked Kaitlin to move back here. Diane was the type of woman who would be dying by the side of the road, blood gushing out of a severed artery, and when asked by a passerby if anything was wrong, would have just smiled and said, “I’m fine!”

Kaitlin and Conrad live in the house where Kaitlin grew up, a modest, not overly large, never been added onto, but solid home over on Dover.

The ex-husband lives somewhere like Chicago or Cleveland. One of those “C” towns. An investment banker. Already remarried, new children. Although it may not have been in that order.

I find Kaitlin interesting because she is different. There is something about her that makes her stick out on the streets of Delphi. Even though she grew up here. There is something about her that makes Delphi a better place. That makes it easier for old timers like me to stay here and not get bogged down and smothered by all those freaking Belknaps on Whittingham.