A Journey of Self-Discovery

To Corpus Christi: indeed. Well, introspection is one thing. But this is a long, serious roadtrip I'm planning with two of my dearest friends, so we need a long, serious backstory.

Justin, Robbie and I are Edwin, Dumas, and Magda Silhavy: two brothers and a sister. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, we have lived since infancy in Barrow, Alaska; and in fact we have no memory of any other place.

Dumas is 28, I am 29, and Edwin is 32. We have come to Corpus via a tortuous route and are on our way to scatter our father's ashes in Mexico. Our father, a Russian by birth, had an unsurpassed passion for mariachi music.

Our mother was not Russian, but a mail-order bride from Las Vegas. The couple crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska, a few thousand years behind the times perhaps, but better late than never, in the late 1970s. Our father died in the crossing. Polar bears may have been involved. Penguins are right out.

Though our mother raised us alone, she was never much of a parent, and abandoned us to our own devices when Dumas was only eighteen. She's shacked up in Fairbanks with some loser now. Edwin, ever the peacemaker, tried to persuade her to come to Mexico with us to scatter Father's ashes, but she told him to stuff it.

Our arduous journey began with a dogsled trip from Barrow to Nome, where we did not see our mother, but caught a single-engine plane to Anchorage. From there we flew to Seattle; from Seattle, to Houston, where we rented a small green VW with a Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem on the back, and wilted purple flowers secured to the windshield via the windshield wipers. (Hopefully it won't rain.) Our journey will only be complete when Father's ashes have been laid to rest in the land that he loved so dearly.

Meanwhile, our work at home is on hold. We're well-educated professionals, you know: we graduated from Barrow High (Gooooooooooo Pharaohs!*) and from UAF with degrees in marketing. We are marketers. We market whale products. You can find us at www.whalebarrow.net.

I don't like to mention it, but Edwin and I have a sneaking suspicion that Dumas may have a hidden ulterior motive for the trip. We suspect he may be trying to recruit people to move to Barrow, enough people so the town can get a Super Wal-Mart. We dearly hope we are mistaken, but we fear not. Dumas' strange obsession is a source of unease in our otherwise peaceful family.

This trip may bring out more truths about our family than we ever cared to know, so it's a good thing we're bringing plenty of vodka.

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*Pharaohs is not right. I can't remember the actual mascot, though.