Still Foolin' 'Em (25 page)

That is always my ritual. I kept going over my lines in my head,
Start with this, go with that,
as I buttoned my shirt with my dad’s silver tuxedo studs. I was nervous and had a little lump in my throat. Hosting an evening like this is not easy.

I’ve been accused of being sentimental, and this time I plead guilty—I think it’s 50 percent because of my genetic makeup and 50 percent because there is something special about being the father of the bride. Jenny, my firstborn, was getting married today.

Jackie Kennedy once said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” And it’s true. The greatest compliments I’ve ever received are about how Janice and I raised our girls. Now, I know part of that is because I’m in show business. When your kids are in a show business family, people tend to give you credit for being a good parent simply if they’re not on TMZ for being arrested for their third DUI in the past two weeks.

I sniffed the beautiful white rose before I slipped it into the buttonhole on my lapel, its familiar scent lingering for a few seconds. My feelings about the moments and milestones in my life with Jenny were starting to crystallize. Which is what happens if your name is Crystal. The first time I’d held all eight pounds, four ounces of her, I’d known this day would eventually arrive. But I hadn’t known it would come so fast. Today I would walk my daughter down the aisle and then, with Janice alongside, stop as Michael, her husband-to-be-in-a-few-minutes, walked toward us. I would then lift her veil, kiss her on the cheek, shake the lucky man’s hand, and give her away forever.

As I straightened my crisp white tuxedo shirt the way Alan King had taught me to do, by opening my fly, reaching in, grabbing the fabric, and pulling it down until it’s smooth, I found myself jotting down notes on her “first sleepover”—the first time Janice and I were alone for a night in three years. All parents have that moment, when they realize they can have sex again and not worry about being noisy—if only they remembered how to have sex. Well, somehow we managed, and nine months later, guess what blessed little event occurred? That’s right, exactly nine months to the day after we decided to send Jenny on another sleepover so we could have sex again, Lindsay arrived.

“Funny,” I said to myself as I tied my bow tie. I thought back to one of the bigger decisions I’d made in my life. When the girls were nine and five, I was busy on the road doing my stand-up pretty much nonstop, and one night Janice said, “We have enough money—you don’t want to be Uncle Daddy.” I got it. Luckily, I stopped going on the road to be at home just at the point in my career when I was starting to get movie offers. Sure, with movies there were times when I was away, but in the end I rarely missed games or school plays or concerts or birthdays. However, despite the better schedule and less travel, one year I thought I was going to miss Lindsay’s birthday. She was in Los Angeles turning eleven, and I was filming
When Harry Met Sally
 … in New York. Her birthday was on a Friday, and I knew I couldn’t make it home unless there was a drastic change in our shooting schedule. Then, miraculously, it rained and I found out I could make a three
P.M.
flight and get back home in time for her birthday. I called Janice and told her to go to the supermarket and get a giant cardboard box, gift-wrap it, keep the bottom open, and leave it by the front gate.

I called Lindsay from the airport to say I was sorry but that this year Daddy just couldn’t make it home for her birthday. Right then an announcement blared over the airport loudspeaker.

“Dad, what’s that?”

I did what all parents do with their kids when confronted with an awkward question: I lied. “We’re shooting in Central Park.”

I then told her not to worry, that Daddy was sending her a big birthday surprise.

I flew back to L.A., and the car dropped me off at the front gate. The gift-wrapped carton was right where it should be. Like a Navy SEAL, I crept up to the house. Unlike a Navy SEAL, I rang the doorbell, sat down, and pulled the box over my head. Janice answered the door and immediately began to do bad summer-stock acting.

“WELL, WHAT’S THIS? OH LOOK, LINDSAY, THIS MUST BE DADDY’S BIG PRESENT. WHAT COULD IT BE?”

I threw off the box and stood there.

Lindsay looked at me, jumped into my arms, and said, “Somebody pinch me.”

“Save story for Lindsay’s wedding,” I scribbled now, underlining it three times. The satin vest was next, and I was relieved that it hid the little bit of paunch I just couldn’t conquer. My notes said, “first kiss.” Oh yeah, that’s a big moment for a dad, when you find out. Of course, Jenny didn’t tell me; I found out when she told Janice, who, after promising never to say a word, called me five seconds later.

“Billy, Jen was at a party and a boy kissed her.”

I nervously asked the natural question that any man in my position would ask: “Tongue?”

As I put my cuff links on, it hit me: my little girl is about to get married, and her next kiss will be her first as a married woman.

“We need you,” said Janice, poking her head through the doorway.

“Look at you,” I was barely able to say, my glistening eyes meeting hers.

“Don’t make me cry—I’ll have to redo my makeup,” Janice said.

“I didn’t say anything,” I replied.

“You didn’t have to,” my beautiful wife whispered.

“One second, I’ll be right there,” I promised. We held hands for a moment, stared at each other, and then she closed the door. I had to compose myself before I could leave for the wedding service. I took a deep breath and looked in the mirror one last time. Shirt, immaculate; bow tie, tied precisely; tux, awesome; pants, perfect crease; shoes, shiny. I started to leave, took a last sip of bubbly, and glanced at my notes once again. I folded them neatly and put them in my breast pocket.

Sometime after dinner, I would make a speech, and then Jenny and I would dance. Giving the opening monologue at the Oscars is hard; this was harder.

But I’d had plenty of practice. A lot of my milestones with my kids involved events where I gave speeches.

I spoke at Jenny’s and Lindsay’s high school graduations, Lindsay’s NYU graduation, both their weddings, their engagement parties, their soccer team parties, and at their Bat Mitzvahs.

I gave a quick speech at Jenny’s fifth birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. That was a Saturday afternoon to remember. I’m giving a happy birthday speech to fifteen five-year-olds bouncing up and down in a salmonella-infested plastic ball pit while a couple with his-and-her devil tattoos are staring at me.

“That looks like Billy Crystal.”

“You’re crazy—what the fuck would he be doing at a Chuck E. Cheese’s?”

The first Bat Mitzvah speech was challenging. Not because of the emotion. When I was standing on the stage looking at the audience, all I could see was 300 people, 250 of whom I didn’t know, all costing me $90 a head.

When I gave the speech at Jenny’s high school graduation, I felt that things were really getting serious. Maybe it was “Pomp and Circumstance” or the caps and gowns or the look on my now seventeen-year-old daughter’s face as she walked up to get her diploma, but that speech signaled the coming storm. The winds would blow and sweep Jenny across the country. The theme was all the changes the graduates would be experiencing. Most of them were now driving, and that is perhaps the most stressful event in any parent’s life. Especially driving in L.A. You not only have to worry about them driving on the nation’s busiest freeways; you have to make sure they know how to tell another driver to go fuck himself in five different languages.

Because we were all constantly worrying when they drove and asking them to “call us when you get there,” that phrase became the closing thought in the speech. They were now on their way to becoming adults, with all the aspirations and pressures the world would bring. Work hard, don’t take any moment for granted, and someday soon you’ll be mature adults with a great education, a good job, and maybe even a family, and please “call us when you get there.”

The summer after Jenny’s graduation, we knew that our time together as the Crystals was dwindling. She was going off to college, and the family would never quite be the same.

There was a ticking clock that whole summer, an event countdown: this is the last time she’ll sleep in her bed before she becomes a legal adult; this is the last time we’ll have dinner together where Mom cooks; is this the last time she’ll lie to you about what time she got in? As her boxes were packed and shipped, we got sadder and sadder. Sometimes she’d quietly walk into the room where I was and just hug me.

At Northwestern, we set up the room, met her roommate, walked around the campus, and then it was time to go. I was leaving my oldest daughter in a strange city to live with someone she had known for one hour. After we said good-bye, we watched her waving to us in the parking lot outside her dorm, and as we drove away our melancholy was tempered by the knowledge that we had raised her right and, more importantly, for the first time in eighteen years, we could walk around the house naked and play our own music. Then we realized,
Wait a second, we can’t do that. Lindsay is still at home.

*   *   *

Lindsay had been born when Jenny was almost five, so Jenny had had us to herself for a long time. Now Lindsay had
her
alone time with us. Everything we did revolved around her. Time flew by, and then it was time for her to go to college. That’s a major milestone for parents: the empty nest.

It’s the quiet that you first notice. The deafening quiet. From the baby cries when you first bring them home to the door slams when they’re teenagers, the house is always noisy. They’ve been your life, and suddenly, they’re gone. It was a huge adjustment for us. However, it then became a great thing. It was just us again; we had a chance to get reacquainted in a new way. We loved it. Then came the next important revelation: THEY NEVER STOP COMING HOME.

Here’s some wisdom I can pass on to you from my vantage point of sixty-five years on this planet: From the time your kids are about three, they’re always leaving … and then once they graduate college, they’re always coming home.

They’re home again, and sometimes you can’t wait for them to leave, because when they come back from college, they don’t come back the same.

You can’t treat them like you used to.

You can’t ask them, “What time are you coming home?”

You can’t ask, “Who were you with?”

You can’t ask, “Where were you, what did you do, and who opened my vodka?” The only thing you really have the right to ask is “Who didn’t flush?” Basically, you have adult strangers living in your house. You can’t talk to them like you used to. But don’t worry; this is a transitional phase where you take a step from being only their parents to also being their friends. And that’s kind of a good thing. You have to let go.

When the girls were little, I created a character named Mr. Phyllis, a flamboyant José Eber character without the cowboy hat, who would shampoo their hair during their baths. While I was blow-drying their hair I would style it into all these funny shapes, all the while chattering away. “This is a fabulous look for you. I call it the unicorn,” I’d say as I twisted the wet hair into a horn. Mr. Phyllis would get nonstop giggles from the girls. It is one of the great times I had with them growing up … until the day Janice said, “Billy, you can’t go in the bathroom.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The girls are taking their bath,” she said.

“I know, I’m going to shampoo their hair.”

“Not anymore. They’re … too big.”

It was one of the saddest days of my life. But you have to let go.

As I finished my champagne, I thought of all of these things I missed already. I could hear the mingling guests, who were now being asked to take their seats for the ceremony. I left my dressing room and joined the wedding party. There were Michael’s parents and grandparents, Janice’s folks, my mom and my brothers, who would walk her down the aisle in the processional. There was stunning Lindsay, the maid of honor, the ushers, and all the beautiful bridesmaids, many of whom I had known since they were in kindergarten. Everyone was getting into position. Janice looked ravishing, a portrait of beauty and poise. And then there was Jenny, the late afternoon sun shining through the delicate lace of her wedding gown, giving her an angelic glow. What a lovely woman she had become right before my eyes. A glimpse of that face I first saw in the nursery was still there. The music started, and Jenny looked at me. “Ready, Dad?” I said, “Not sure.” I then did something that from the time she was a little girl I had told her I would do on her wedding day. “What’s on your dress?” I asked in a very concerned way, pointing to her waist.

She looked down quickly, and I raised my finger up to her nose. “Gotcha,” I said.

We laughed. I told her I loved her, she put her arm inside mine, and then in a few moments she was Mrs. Michael Foley.

The speeches I gave at both girls’ weddings had to be funny, heartfelt, and honest and, most importantly, personal, because you are really only talking to your daughter, with a big crowd watching. Standing there looking at my girls, I felt all the years, all the diapers, the fevers, the car pools, the spelling tests, the term papers, the Halloween costumes, the spaghetti twirled on forks, the first bicycle, the puppies, the volleyball games, the school plays, the boyfriends, the soccer games, the gymnastics practices, the giggles, the tears, the mean girls, the prom dresses, leaving for college, the “Dad, we’re engaged.” The life.

I managed to give the speech at each of the girls’ weddings without crying, and it wasn’t the champagne. It had actually become simple. When Lindsay got married, as I looked at my now grown-up beauties sitting there with their wonderful husbands, I knew they were safe. Their men were perfect fits. I raised my glass and said what a good feeling it was to know that we’d brought them up to be intelligent, charming women who good men could fall in love with. They say the father of the bride gives his daughter away. But after searching my soul that day, I knew that this wasn’t really accurate. For in truth, when you’re a father, at each milestone along the path, you’ve been giving them away, piece by piece, little by little, their whole lives.