by Steve Press

Toward the end of my 5-year exile in Nashua, NH, I had laparoscopic surgery to repair a hiatal hernia. I survived the first post-surgical week on a liquid diet. Now, if you think, as I did, that “liquid diet” means a 3-martini lunch, or making it one for my baby and one more for the road, you’re as sadly mistaken as I was. 

The core of the diet was Cream of Wheat cereal. It should be prohibited by the FDA for anyone (at either end of the age spectrum) who has at least one tooth. I figured that just eating it made me eligible for assisted living. There was some good stuff I could eat: yogurt and plain ice cream. I chose Gifford’s coffee and vanilla ice cream. It’s unfortunate that you can’t get Gifford’s in Michigan, but you can’t get Bell’s Beer in New England, so I guess that makes us even.

I could also eat Jello. One of the more curious side effects of Vicodin was that I forgot I could eat it. Luckily, I was able to gradually reduce the dose of Vicodin, so the relative clarity of my thinking returned, and, with the help of my daughter Valerie, who came for the weekend, I started eating that sweet, cold, and citrus-colored Jello. 

Valerie, who has an MD and an MPH, was truly the assistance in assisted living. She would remind me to make more. She was also my cinematherapist. She wanted to watch Bridesmaids, but I said I wasn’t watching a chick flick.

Instead we watched Source Code which had me crying at the end (probably the Vicodin talking), but at least it had stuff (Chicago) blowing up. 

The next day we watched a double feature: The Producers (original 1968 version) and Jaws (1975). I figured I had raised Valerie right when during a particularly silly scene in Producers, she exclaimed “They don’t make movies like that anymore.” On the other hand, she might have added, too low for me to hear, “Thank God!”

While we were watching Jaws I displayed visible signs of fear (not Vicodin-related). Val noticed and asked if I was scared. I admitted there were three things I was scared of: snakes, ghosts, and sharks. After she got over her disillusionment (hmmm, Dad is not invincible) and stopped laughing, we tried to come up with a film about the ghosts of dead snakes and sharks terrorizing the world. We didn’t get very far, so if anyone is interested, have at it. I tried watching Snakes on a Plane, hoping for inspiration, but it was such an awful movie I yanked it out of the DVD player after 10 minutes and never got to hear Samuel L. Jackson recite his famous mantra.

For some mysterious reason I’m not scared of vampires. One evening my other daughter Corinna was sitting entranced in front of the TV. I asked what she was watching. She said “Dad, you have to see this.” It turned out to be Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, the most visually beautiful and moving vampire story of all time. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Bigelow was also a painter who trained at the San Francisco Art Institute. Every scene was like a painted canvas.

After Val got home to (an amazingly not blown up) Chicago, she emailed me that Bridesmaids was listed as one the best films of 2011 by the American Film Institute. Since AFI had also included the classic Looney Tunes cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” (source of the “wovewy” duet, “Kill da Wabbit”) as one of its earliest listings, I agreed I would watch Bridesmaids with Val the next time we were together.

Life eased up when I started the 2-week long soft food diet. I had Rice Krispies (because it’s not a whole grain cereal) and canned pears every day for breakfast. I no longer needed any Vicodin so I had little trouble remembering to remove the lobster from the shell before I ate it.

 By the end of my recovery, I had an unopened box of Cream of Rice and about 10 cans of creamed soups (cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, etc.). I could eat strained creamed soups as part of the liquid diet, but even Soylent Green (in liquid form) would have been preferable. I asked friends to place their orders for the unused items within a week. Since there were no takers, all remaining stock was donated to a food drive.

I’ve seen Valerie many times since, but still haven’t watched Bridesmaids.