“Tell him the truth,” Cosmo Castorini tells his daughter Loretta as the family gathers in the kitchen for the dramatically funny final scene of the 1987 movie Moonstruck. “They find out anyway.”

Yes, they do, and isn’t that the truth?

The movie Moonstruck is full of memorable lines, like those two from the worn father to his nervous daughter. The film is a favorite, and the remembered lines drift easily into conversation — again and again. I find myself repeating the lines with a word missing or one substituted. Despite the paucity of my memory, the truth of the original statements seems to somehow find its way and reaches out to a ready audience — again and again.

Tell them truth. They’ll find out anyway.

Is the truth what we know and believe and often wish not to acknowledge and share but know it will be anyway?

It was for Cher in the movie, and she won Best Actress for its performance.

Speak the truth.

Write what you know.

Perhaps the two are not that far apart.

Let’s start with one from an older collection, “98.6 (95 Stories)”, and see what you think.

 

GRSMERCH

© James J. Doyle, Jr. 2013

Write about what you know.

The reason you’re not good at what you do is because you don’t write about what you know.

Don’t make it up — draw on your past, your experiences.

 

“GRSMERCH”

 

I know nothing about it, but I like the sound.

I’m sure it’s not politically correct, but I don’t care.

I will no longer be victimized by an antique totem.

 

When he was a scout, my father carved a totem. It was a small slightly tilting totem pole with uneven painted faces of birds and animals and someone at the top in a funny wide-brimmed hat. The carving from a single bent branch of wood sat downstairs in our house, in the basement, on a green-painted chest of drawers from the old farm where dad grew up.

For years, it was there on the shelf, not hidden away, where you could see it against the far wall when you turned from the lower step.

Near that totem, my mom played damp music with gusto on a baby grand piano over linoleumed floors beneath the drifting broken light from high narrow below-ground windows.

This was the same room where my children and their cousins built forts from overturned chairs, couch cushions and old blankets, ends anchored with pillows and shut into that old chest of drawers. Lights turned off and curtains drawn, their young imaginations crawled with flashlights to covered unseen spaces, glowing from within like stars in a limitless cave.

From where I watched on the steps, it was a tower in the ground with treasured thoughts.

 

I believe in GRSMERCH.

 

But not as much as I believe in towers in the ground.

 

 

Never stop searching for the truth and sharing it with others.

Why not? As Cosmo said: They’ll find out anyway.

And, you never know what you’ll find,

Along the way,

 

Grandpa Jim