From Something to Sing About
First you hear cooing coming from the kitchen, then giggles, and finally the soft patter of French. Celine Dion is doing what she enjoys most: hanging out with her year-old son, René-Charles. Minutes later she appears with child in arms, wearing sneakers, white slacks (stained with chocolate and spinach from the baby's feeding) and a blue shirt with the tail untucked."He can take steps," she says. "But we are always carrying him, holding him close." Two years ago the 34-year-old chanteuse told fans she wanted to take a break from her music. She felt she needed time to be with her husband and, as she put it, "to be bored." And she wanted a baby.
In 1994 Dion had married her twice-divorced manager, René Angélil, 60, who has three grown children. The couple set about trying to start a family, but Dion was convinced the stress of relentless touring was preventing her from conceiving. She had sold nearly 130 million albums worldwide, won five Grammys, and collaborated with Barbra Streisand and Luciano Pavarotti. She had dominated the Billboard charts with the hit "My Heart Will Go On," from Titanic. But after a world tour that ended with a millennium concert in Montreal, she decided it was time to stick closer to home.
Her instincts were just right. She became pregnant via in vitro fertilization, recommended before her husband received treatment for throat cancer in 1999.
She gave birth to René-Charles on January 25, 2001, and has spent the last year golfing, cooking and tending to her boy and his dad. This month she makes her return to music with the release of a new album, A New Day Has Come.
Writer Ana Veciana-Suarez sat down with Dion at the singer's Jupiter, Florida, estate to talk about motherhood and Dion's changing priorities.
RD: What was it like to take two years off?
Dion: Crucial. It was very, very, very important. My husband was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. He's still in remission, and he's doing -- knock on wood -- fantastically. He needed me. And I needed him to need me. Normally René's a tough guy. He's the one who's in control of everything. But now he wanted to lay [his head] on my shoulder. He gave me a responsibility, and it made me feel very powerful and very strong.
RD: And the baby?
Dion: Yes, we wanted a child. For René, the fact that he almost lost his life ... to give life was an incredible achievement.
RD: Did you miss show business?
Dion: I needed a balance. When you're in show business for twenty-something years, at one point you need to have a normal life. It was just too much. After Beauty and the Beast and Titanic -- too much publicity, TV, radio, too much. I didn't want people to say, "Oh, my God, her again?!" And I don't miss show business at all. But when I got back in the recording studio and started to sing, something was there that had never left. I'm from Quebec, and when I leave my country, a piece of me stays there. Well, it's the same thing with show business. I stopped, but a part of me, this little candle stayed ...
RD: Your candle still stayed lit.
Dion: Yes. And when you sing one song after another over the years, it's all pretty much the same thing. But when you stop and enjoy life, and you have a child, it gives you something to sing about. It's refreshing.
RD: How did you arrive at the decision to come back? Had you given yourself a timetable?
Dion: I didn't want to stop my career for too, too long and have to rebuild the whole thing. At the same time, I needed more than six months off. We decided two years was fair. I'm glad the first try with the in vitro worked, because if it hadn't that would have pushed me even more. But it was always clear in my mind that I was going to come back.
RD: You're a different person now. You're a mother, you've done other things.
Is your show-business life going to be different?
Dion: Very different. I'm not going to be touring anymore. In March of 2003, we're going to move to Las Vegas for three years. There's no way that I can take the plane every night, leave the hotel every afternoon, do the sound check, eat, do my hair and makeup, stretch, do vocal exercises, do the show, get in the airplane again, next city, René-Charles, ear infections, and I'm not being able to be with my son. Every year is important, but the first years of a child are very, very important.
A Different Kind of Wealth
RD: You establish a foundation in those first years.Dion: You do, and that foundation makes you solid for the rest of your life. A foundation, true values -- that's what I received. And that's going to be our biggest challenge -- to raise our kid in this environment of a not-normal life, and remain normal people.
RD: You want René-Charles to have stability.
Dion: Yes. I can't just go on tour and not be able to see him. I won't be the best -- as a mother or a performer. I want to be professional in my show-business life, but I also want to be professional as a mother. I have a very important role to play.
René and I were in Vegas, and I said, "Why can't we just establish ourselves at one place? Why can't people just come and see our show?" I thought it was a little pretentious for me to be thinking that way. Then I thought, It's the only way.
Luckily, Caesars Palace offered us this contract. We're building a house there now. I will leave home around six at night for the show. At six o'clock the day's almost over for a little one. This way, when I leave home I know he's fine, and I can be the best of me. And the show is going to be spectacular.
It's being produced by the people from Cirque du Soleil who did O. There are going to be about a hundred people onstage. For the first time, I'm going to have a beautiful, visual show. All these things -- I'm back in the studio, singing again, the Vegas show, René-Charles is going to be fine. I'm excited. I'm happy to come back.
RD: Tell us what René-Charles is like. What have you enjoyed most about being with him?
Dion: Every single moment. When he was very, very small, it was so nice to just hold him. He smells so good, he's so warm and nice. I love when you take off their socks in the morning, and he opens his toes, and there's fuzz. If you smell the toes, it smells a little like vinegar.
RD: We've read that you have another fertilized embryo that is frozen. Are you planning to implant it?
Dion: After Vegas, because I don't want to give any less to the second child. They deserve to be breastfed the same way, and Mommy to be home, and I don't want to say in three months I'm going to start working again, so can you drink a little faster. That is, if we're lucky enough to have another one.
RD: Women say that having a child is a defining factor in a woman's life. How has it changed you?
Dion: I hope it doesn't sound wrong, but nothing else matters now. He's the center of our universe. I'll die for my child. I would open my whole body up -- take whatever you need. It changes your life, and you love them so much. They are you. The first day when they cut the umbilical cord, whew, that was hard already. The cuts start right there. Then they start to walk and want to fly, they start school, they get married. It's always a cut.
RD: It's so hard to let go.
Dion: It is hard. I'm not saying nothing else is important, because you have to be healthy, you have to take care of your happiness, but there's no question that he's priority.
RD: Every parent has dreams for their children. What are your dreams for René-Charles?
Dion: I don't care if he's a garbageman, a fireman, a rock 'n' roll guitar player, a lawyer, a dentist, a father. I just want him to be a good human being. I want him to be generous, caring, open-minded. I think that's what's most important. Sometimes you're nobody in life. You have no money, you're not successful, you're not pretty, but you mean well and have a good heart. People should pay more attention to people like that.
RD: You've said in the past that you're very close to your mother. Is she the one who passed on these values to you?
Dion: I'm sure it comes from growing up in a family without money. Even though my parents had just enough to put food on the table for us, the door was open for anybody else who knocked. Today I have a big house and all the help in the world, and I wish my mother could have had all this. She had nothing. At the same time, everything we needed, she gave to us. She gave her life to us.
RD: Now that you're a mother, do you appreciate her more?
Dion: She's a god to me, my idol, the person that I look up to the most.
RD: She raised fourteen children, right?
Dion: Fourteen children, and none of us are cuckoo, or stupid. We all work hard. We all mean well.
RD: How often do you have family gatherings?
Dion: Everybody at once is only at Christmas because we're about 200 people. They all live in Montreal. We have a house there, but we spend more time here.
RD: How did growing up in a large family affect you? You've said that you were pampered by your brothers and sisters because you were the baby.
Dion: What has been given to me is security. Whatever happens, when you have this foundation of love -- of being able to count on brothers and sisters and parents -- you know you have someone there to support you. I don't want to end up dying alone. Having a big family, I know there will be a lot of people around all the time. My wealth is my family, the people around me, the love and support.
Going With the Flow
RD: It's funny to me that someone who has such a talent as you would not say that your wealth is all in your voice.Dion: Not at all. To me, it's like money. Okay, you have money, for old age, good for you. You sing, you are lucky, have a good time, good for you. But it's not a must in life. If I didn't have a voice -- or if I have a voice, but I'm not successful -- I would have been as happy being a mother or working at a store. I'm happy for what I've been given -- my roots and values. It's not my voice that's bringing me my joy. That's just a side order.
RD: You had the scare with René with cancer. That's got to be very frightening.
Dion: Yes. It's not something that you think about every day, but I'm scared, of course. Being the youngest of the entourage, I feel like I'm going to lose petals on all my flowers. We're all going to lose people that we love. We lose our mothers and our fathers, and sometimes I think, if I go first, maybe it would be better. But that's not the way it works. Hopefully we can be together as long as possible. We're fortunate for every day. You can't think of death. You have to be thankful and not take anything for granted.
RD: Live for the moment?
Dion: You deal with this if and when it happens, and you find the strength. That's life. Life is death. Life is not given to us, it is borrowed.
RD: What's your plan for the long term?
Dion: What I think I want is to do the Vegas thing for a few years, see if it works. Then take three, four, five years off, maybe do a show here and there, a record once in a while, maybe a movie if it's meant to be -- but relax. I've done a lot of work. I don't mean I'll retire completely, but I'll do just a few things here and there. We'll see.
RD: Sometimes the future is what happens to us.
Dion: Well, that's it. You can see what you might want, but then you have to go with the flow.