- Good evening, everybody.

- [Audience] Good evening.

- So before I start my story, I want to ask you a question that I do not want an answer to right now.

And the question is very simply this.

What is the difference between a house and a home?

You can ponder that as I tell you my story.

So let's go back to 1976.

I am a handsome 19-year-old boy living in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

I was trying to get work as an actor.

I was a broadcasting major.

And out of nowhere, not really nowhere, I got an invitation from a friend of mine from France to stay in her home for what amounted to a semester.

Now, this friend, her name was Isabelle, had actually stayed in my home the previous summer.

And my family adored her, and she and I became good platonic friends.

So I thought about it for about nine seconds, said yes, (audience laughing) and then, I began to think a little bit harder as I got closer to the time that I was going to be leaving, for a couple of reasons.

One, I didn't speak a word of French.

Okay, I had the book that told me what I should be reading, but my phrases basically consisted of (speaking in a foreign language), and the most important of all, (speaking in a foreign language).

Where are the toilets?

(audience laughing) The other thing that made me a little bit nervous was, I only knew Isabelle for a month, and I was going to spend a long period of time with her family.

And it was like, "Well, what if they don't like me?

What if I don't feel comfortable in the home?"

Well, I needn't have worried.

Because when I landed at Orly Airport on a very warm September summer's night, Isabelle was there to pick me up at the airport.

And we just took up our friendship exactly where we had left it off.

See, during the year, we only communicated a few times by letters.

Phone calls were $2.75 a minute.

(audience laughing) So yeah, we weren't doing a lot of calling.

But she drove me back through Paris, and I got to see the Eiffel Tower, which to this very day, every time I see it, I just go, "Oh."

And then we arrived at her home.

And now comes my moment of truth.

I'm meeting Madame Flax.

The door opens up and this little lady comes up to me, and she kind of holds me at arms' length for a second and then draws me in and gives me the mandatory two-cheek kiss and then pushes me back again and says to me, "Welcome to your home."

(audience awing) And then she did what every good Jewish mother does around the world and she pushed me towards the kitchen and said, "What can I get you to eat or drink?"

(audience laughing) Even if I didn't want it, I was going to have something to eat or drink.

Well, what none of us knew at that moment was that, two years later, I would marry Isabelle.

(audience awing) And Madame Flax would become (speaking in a foreign language).

(audience awing) So when you get to a city and you have not, and again, I hadn't traveled other than Tijuana, which is not really traveling.

(audience laughing) You start to explore the neighborhood and pretty soon you get into a rhythm.

And we lived on a street called (speaking in a foreign language) in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, and every neighborhood is just that, it is a neighborhood.

And keep in mind, this is 1976.

There's no internet.

There's no social media.

People did this unique thing.

It's called speaking to each other.

(audience laughing) And so I got to know the people in the neighborhood.

I would start my mornings by stopping off at the little magazine/bookstore stand, which was about 100 meters from the house.

And I would get my "International Herald Tribune" from George and his son Thierry.

And it got to a point where the more often I went, they were saving that paper for me.

They would save me a "Time" magazine if it came in.

Across the street was a (speaking in a foreign language), which is a high school that Isabelle went to.

Further up the street was a market.

There was nothing super about it, but it was a market.

Then you had the pharmacist in Monsieur Levee.

You had the flower shop where I bought flowers for 46 years.

And you also had a cleaner that wrapped your clothes better than any birthday present you had ever received.

(audience laughing) Across the street was the target for me in the morning.

That was the (speaking in a foreign language), where I would buy the baguettes for the day and maybe a (speaking in a foreign language) or a croissant.

But I learned something very important at that point in time and that is, you buy one more baguette than you need for the house, simply because you're going to eat at least half of it on the way home.

(audience laughing) It's true.

(audience laughing) Well, unfortunately, we got some bad news that we knew was coming last December 7th.

And that was that my dear mother-in-law, who by the way, I never had an argument with except for one time, and that's because I did not want her to take out the garbage.

And she was angry at me for not letting her do that.

But we had never argued.

We were in love and she had passed.

And so I lost two things.

I lost a woman who I adored, but I also knew I was losing the neighborhood.

Because we were selling our home.

At that point, the family had purchased the home from my mother-in-law, and we had decided that we were going to sell it.

And so came the last night that Isabelle and I were there, and we were going home back to Virginia.

And I took the one long walk that I knew, years ago I knew I would one day be taking the last walk down the (speaking in a foreign language), at least while we owned the apartment.

And it was snowing and it was cold and miserable, and I walked outside bundled up.

And through the little snowflakes that came down, I saw the ghosts of the people who used to be the little shop owners there.

I saw Thierry and George.

I saw Monsieur Levee, the pharmacist.

I saw all the kids who were lined up in front of the high school.

Each person, as I was walking by, was nodding to me or doffing their cap or waving.

And as I made the full circle back, I said a very silent (speaking in a foreign language), thank you, thank you for the memories that every single one of you people had given to me and the friendship.

Well, I got back into the house, and needless to say, I was pretty broken up.

I had not cried at all.

I was kind of the, "I'm the strong man.

I'm gonna take care of the family," but I didn't cry until I walked through that door.

And then, I realized that I was losing a home, and it weighed heavily on me.

See, I've been very lucky.

I grew up in three great homes.

I grew up with my parents.

My mom is in the audience here tonight.

I grew up in a home that Isabelle and I created for our children.

And I grew up in the loving home that was provided to me by my mother-in-law in Paris.

So I asked a question at the beginning, what makes a house a home?

It's simple.

It's the people inside the house that make it a home.

It's the love, it's the memories.

And more importantly, it's that neighborhood.

It's that feeling of, you're home.

You know the people there.

And so I know tonight, right now, somewhere in the vast universe that we live in, my mother-in-law is watching me do this little story.

And to her, I want to say what I always said to her, (speaking in a foreign language), which means, "Thank you, Mama, for the house of peace."

Thank you.

(audience applauding and cheering)