Yesterday we all went down to San Antonio to spend some time with Dad McMains. He’s glad to be back home, and has been repeatedly surprised with the number of people who have come from various quarters to lend aid and support. Many folks for whom Dad did some small favor many years back have sent flowers and cards, shown up at the hospital and at home, and volunteered to help with typing and paperwork. Closer friends have stopped by to install blinds in the bedroom, offered to help drive Dad around, and have stocked the freezer to help ease things for the family.

One of the risk factors for stroke that Dad showed was high blood pressure. In order to get that down and reduce the risk of recurrence, Dad’s going on a low-sodium diet. There’s a phenomenal amount of sodium on the average American’s menu, so this represents a pretty significant change in eating habits for him, as it would for most of us. We sampled his no-salt sesame sticks (not bad), no-salt tortilla chips (rather worse), and his potassium-based table salt substitute (altogether funky). I made some salsa without salt for him while we were there to help blunt the blandness of the tortilla chips.

Another aspect of the blood pressure control regimen is regular exercise. Toward that end, we all went out for a walk through the neighborhood about an hour before dusk last night. Liam was holding hands with both Dad and I as we walked. Occasionally, as children do, he would pick up both feet so we’d lift him, the load split between me and my father, and carry him for a few steps before setting him down again. Then, he’d start kicking both feet up in the air, and Dad would give him a little push so that his center of gravity would make it over the top, and he’d do a backflip before landing again.

And suddenly, I was immensely grateful for this moment: walking side by side with the father whom I love, splitting the load of carrying my boy, three generations enjoying the coolness of the evening and the closeness of family. The recentness of the stroke only brought home again the fact that, in spite of what we often fool ourselves into believing, we’re not ultimately in control of our own lives. That knowledge makes the times like these that we do have that much sweeter, and imparts a sense of urgency to the task of making sure the things we should say don’t go unsaid.

To that end: I love you Dad, admire you, and I’m awfully glad we get to enjoy this chapter of our lives together.

Dad was checked out of the hospital this morning, and is back home as of lunchtime. It looks like the loss of most of the right side of his visual field may be permanent, though there’s some chance that it will improve over the next 12 to 18 months.

Please keep him in your prayers as he recovers and figures out what effect this will have on his plans for the next several years. This is all still sinking in for all of us.

Tuesday morning my Dad had a stroke.

A stroke is a failure of the circulatory system to deliver blood to a section of the brain, either because of a clot or a burst blood vessel. In this case, the section of my Dad’s brain that was affected was the vision center — he lost much of the right side of his field of vision. There’s a chance that some of his field of vision will return, but if it doesn’t happen in the next 24 hours, the loss will probably be permanent. Because my Dad is subject to migraines with aura, which (like mine) manifest as a temporary loss of vision, he initially thought the stroke was just of those, and didn’t consider getting treatment until the critical first hour was already past.

We’re very grateful that things weren’t worse. Stroke can cause motor impairment, mental problems, memory loss, and difficulties with speech. I was relieved when I got to my Dad’s house to see that he was otherwise in good condition, moving around without difficulty, speaking lucidly, and maintaining a sense of humor about the whole experience. While vision loss is a wretched thing to have to live with, it’s the stroke symptom to which sufferers can most readily adjust.

We checked Dad into the hospital for the night so that they could keep a good eye on him, but it appears that he’ll probably be discharged today after they run an MRI on him to determine whether the cause was a clot or a burst blood vessel. (The treatments for these are different: blood clots can be prevented with blood thinning agents, which would be counterproductive if the brain was already hemorrhaging.)

I’ll provide an update when I know more. In the meantime, you can learn about how to recognize stroke at the American Stroke Organization.

Friday night, I took the kids for our first visit to The Corral Theatre in nearby Wimberley to see Shrek 2. The Corral is an outdoor theater with a single, big screen made from painted plywood, vintage carbon arc projectors, and actual, honest-to-goodness, reasonably-priced concessions. I’d read about the Theatre a while back, and had wanted to bring the kids out ever since, so was pretty excited to actually be making the trek at last.

We arrived without incident, and were instantly charmed with the place. Old, listing wood slat fences surround the place; seating consists of rows and rows of metal lawn chairs and bleachers that look as though they were rescued from a high school practice field; horses from the adjacent ranch stalk the periphery and peek in through knotholes, and the students who work there are courteous and friendly.

We had arrived an hour before showtime, which turned out to be a good thing, as by the time dusk fell, the place was packed. In addition to all the provided seating, many people brought their own chairs and blankets, and some enterprising high school students had brought about 20 boxes of pizza, which they were selling to the crowd for $2 per slice. The high schoolers sitting next to us on the bleachers kept slipping money to a grateful Liam, who would immediately go spend it on candy at the concession stand.

We had a great time at the theater, and look forward to a return visit soon. (For more about the place, see the Houston Chronicle’s article.)

Daniel and I hit the Geocaching trail for the first time in a few months yesterday. We went to find a San Marcos cache that we’d never been to before. Unfortunately, we chose the absolute wrong way in, and had to cross several barbed wire fences and shed a not insignificant amount of blood before we finally found the place. On the way out, we actually followed the roadway that the instructions referenced, and it was blissfully easy.

Good to be back caching again; it’s a great way to kill some stress when my inner introvert has had a bit too much stimulation, and I’m discovering parts of San Marcos and Texas I had no idea existed.

My buddy David went to the opening of the new Apple store at Barton Creek Mall this morning. (An Apple store in Central Texas is long overdue, as far as I’m concerned.) David took a few minutes to start a video chat session with me from there so that I could vicariously take part it the revelries. I held up a magic markered “Hello Apple Geeks!” sign for the benefit of the crowd, a few of whom got a good chuckle out of it. The mob looked excited, and the store looked great — I’ll have to make a pilgrimage soon. (Ironically, the store is right on the way to my old job, so would have been much easier for me to get to several months before it actually opened.)

Thanks to Jason, I now have a Gmail account to play with. (Gmail is Google’s in-testing web mail service, which provides a full gig of storage and strong information management features, as one would expect from Google.) If you want to help me try it out, shoot me a mail at seanmctex@gmail.com . (Yes, that’s an open invitation, Spambots — let’s test their Spam filtering too!)

My step-brother Adam and his wife Celeste were in town last weekend from Arizona, where Adam is attending school to become a certified Harley Davidson mechanic. We enjoyed a happy few hours with them at Taco Cabana after their arrival. Adam’s doing the best he ever has with school, and seems to be quite enjoying the experience. Celeste has finished up a painting of a Sphinx that she had been working on, and is taking a bit of a break before launching into another painting project. It was great to get to see them, and to hear how life in Arizona is treating them. (The short version: they’re anxious to get back to Texas.)

I also got to see my old friend Chip, with whom I ran around a lot in middle and high school, and his wife and child. (Chip, if you’re reading this, the dang email address on your business card bounced when I tried it. Grr.)

It was wholly delightful to get to renew those relationships, though I only wished we could have had longer to do so!

We put The Adams Family on a plane back to Virginia this past Wednesday after a wonderful 10 day visit with them. Jeff had originally been planning on going back earlier, but was able to extend his stay and depart with the rest of the family. It was an immense treat to get to spend the time with them. While I didn’t get to show off this beautiful part of Texas as much as my inner tour guide would have liked, we greatly enjoyed the chance to catch up with these dear people before they leave for Uganda later this year.

Some highlights:

• Playing Balderdash, initially for points, and later for laughs.
• A trip to Schlitterbahn. True to Texas weather form, the day started out beautifully. Then, around 2:00, there was a huge clap of thunder, and the rain began. We took shelter in an arcade, and watched the rain turn to torrents. Then, amid the thunder, we started to hear sharper sounds of impact, and soon saw marble-sized hail plummeting earthward. While we expected it to escalate to plagues of frogs, the wave pool turning to blood, and locust next, it instead let up and turned beautiful and sunny again by 3:00pm, but not before a nearby tuber had been struck by lightning. (He was fine, thanks to some quick resuscitation on the part of the Schlitterbahn staff.)
• Bleary-eyed, late night, far reaching discussions over politics, the state of the Episcopal church, college friends, parenting, history, family, and more.
• Trips to the lovely, crystalline San Marcos river.

While it slipped by without my mentioning it on the appropriate date, Kathy and I celebrated our 9th anniversary on May 27. Our visiting relatives kept an eye on the kids for us while we went out for a dinner at Palmer’s, followed by a visit to the $1.50 second run theater to take in 50 First Dates, which was alternately quite vulgar and very sweet, and which we quite enjoyed between the walrus barf jokes.

In celebration of our anniversary and my gainful employment, Kathy slipped out to Grant’s store and presented me with an amazing gift: A Fender GB-41 SCE Acoustic Electric Cutaway Bass. Easily the nicest guitar I’ve ever had, it has a great unamplified sound, loud enough for acoustic jamming with traditional guitars, and works well plugged in too. When I played it at Cheatham Street for the first time, I had three different people come up and comment on how much they liked the sound of the new instrument. I’ll probably be using it exclusively with the band once I get a few little issues worked out.

Anyway, it’s hard for me to believe it’s been nine years now. As ever, I’m grateful for the time, and for a partner who, through her support, doesn’t make me into what she wants, but helps me to be even more the person I want to be. Thanks, Kathy, for everything.