Put on Your Crown (18 page)

You don’t have to tell me to celebrate. I’m the girl who’s quick to throw a party. But it wasn’t always that way. When I won
my first Grammy, I barely felt it. I was so deep in my grief over Winki’s death that the moment came and went. But I’ve made
up for it since then. When I found out I was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for
Chicago
, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning. I’d just come home from spending the weekend in Atlanta. I’d been up all night
on the tour bus, watching the first season of
Good Times
in its entirety. It was drafty on the bus and I couldn’t sleep. When I finally got home I headed straight to bed, and I’d
just slipped under the covers, all comfy cozy, when Shakim called me. He said:

“Yo, we got the nomination!”

“What nomination?”

“The Oscar nomination.”

“No waaaaaay!”

I went jumping, running, and screaming around the house. I called all my friends and woke them up. My assistant was downstairs
sleeping, so I dived on top of her and woke her up. I said, “Yo, we got it!”

It was a special moment, because it was so unexpected.

Oscar nominations, Grammy wins, a star on Hollywood Boulevard—these are all big deals. But they’re not the only moments I
celebrate. I take the time to appreciate even the simplest things in life. I want every day to be life for the living, not
just traipsing through it and existing. I want to be in the present.

Too often, I see people plugged into their BlackBerrys, iPhones, or computers. Either they need constant distractions or they
feel like they have to capture every moment on their camera phones and blog their thoughts to the entire world. Somehow that’s
more important to them than having a face-to-face conversation with someone who’s actually in the same room. That’s no way
to live. You’re missing out on so much. Some of my most treasured memories are those times my brother and I sat around the
family dinner table with our parents, just talking to each other. Those are the special moments, if for no other reason than
that it’s where you want to be and everything in your world is right. No fanfare. No golden statues. Just chillin’ and passing
the time with the people you love.

After dinner, Mom and Dad would have us read sections of the newspaper out loud, so they could see how we were doing in our
reading and comprehension. If we didn’t understand a word, they’d make us go look it up in a dictionary and they’d teach us
how to pronounce it. We’d surprise them later on by using it correctly in a sentence. Those conversations made us want to
read more and learn. They were invaluable lessons. You can’t do that when your kids are texting each other and you’re checking
your crackberry every five seconds for messages. Have you seen all those people walking around outside, talking on their cell
phones? It could be the most perfect day of the summer, but they’re blind to it. Their bodies are there, but their minds are
somewhere else.

No moment is too inconsequential to explore. It could be something as small as feeling the cool breeze on my face, enjoying
a walk by the beach with a good friend, or just kicking back at my mother’s house, drinking iced tea and watching all the
wildlife in the woods at the edge of her backyard in New Jersey. She’s feeding a whole family of raccoons back there!

My favorite vacation of all time was a trip I took with my mother to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a few years ago. It was special
because it was just the two of us—a mother-and-daughter trip. Nothing was planned. We just did things on the spur of the moment.
One
day I convinced her to ride a wave runner with me. Another time we took a golf lesson together, and I saw that Mom had
quite the swing, like me! I thought, “Oh, so that’s where I get it from.”

We decided to rent a Jeep and take a drive to the original Hotel California in Todos Santos, an artists’ colony about a forty-five-minute
drive away. We ate lunch at the hotel, explored the streets, and talked to some of the artists in their galleries. Finding
that place on our own, we felt like a couple of intrepid explorers.

Back in Cabo, Mom bonded with a woman at the hotel who was on the food services staff. She recommended a restaurant in town
where her husband worked, so that night we tried it. The food was great, but we got torn up by mosquitoes. It was so bad that
we had to leave before dinner was over. It was painful. We were scratching ourselves and slapping each other’s arms and legs
every time one of those little beasts landed on us. But we were laughing so hard! It was just one of those funny moments that
we got to experience together.

We shared a two-bedroom suite, and one night we decided to go to bed early. Mom went to her room, and I went to my room and
flicked on the television. All of a sudden, I could hear laughter coming from the other side of the suite. And every time
I
heard the laughter, I was laughing myself. We were both watching something and laughing in the same spots. I went into my
mother’s room and asked her, “What are you watching?” It was
Napoleon Dynamite
. Of all the English satellite channels to choose from, we’d both stumbled on that movie. Neither of us had seen it before,
so we decided to watch it together. We were on the floor, howling with laughter. It doesn’t get any better than that.

When I look at the pictures from that vacation, I look so happy just to be hanging out with my best friend in the world. What
made it memorable was the spontaneity of it. We were completely in the moment. I promised myself we’d do it every year, and
for the most part, we have. Together, we’re gonna cover the globe.

I have great moments on the road with my dad, too. When we’re traveling, he drives for me and runs my security. He’s a former
special ops guy, and he spent years as an undercover cop, so the man has eyes in the back of his head. But he also knows how
to roll. He understands how to adapt to any situation and get the most out of it. We had a ball when we were filming
Last Holiday
. We hung out in New Orleans, Austria, Czechoslovakia. We explored the bohemian world of Prague, where all the backpackers
and intellectuals like to hang. But mostly we gambled! Dad comes from a long line of professional gamblers. He’s not compulsive
about it. He’s just so damn good at it. He taught me how to shoot pool, bet on horses, play craps, poker, the roulette wheel.
Man, he cleaned up at the casinos in Europe. He won more than 30,000 euros one night. Dad was gambling with Timothy Hutton,
and he taught Tim his method. They’d play a little blackjack, progress to a certain point, then go back to the roulette table.
He explained the denominations of the chips, which are square in European casinos, not round, and he warned Tim to make sure
he cashed those chips when they got to a certain amount, so he could appreciate their full value—the euro value of what he
was actually gambling with—and walk away ahead of the game. “Don’t treat those chips like confetti,” he said. Tim made some
serious winnings that night, too.

Good gamblers really know how to live in the moment. Scared money never wins. You also have to know that once you hit it big
in a game, the odds of it happening again are slim and you should walk away. But you have to play the game to play the game.
It’s for the amusement of it. Once you start telling
yourself, “I gotta win this, I can’t afford to lose that,” you’re sunk.
It’s just like life itself. Play to win!

My dad and I have a ball wherever we go. Doing thirty cities on a tour bus can get pretty monotonous, so we laugh and joke
and tell stories. I love the simple stuff, like pulling into a Waffle House for breakfast or doing a little shopping at Wal-Mart.
People do a double take when they see Queen Latifah in these places, but they’re always respectful and friendly. They usually
want to chat and take a picture or get an autograph, and I’ve had some pleasant conversations with regular people when I’ve
been out on the road. A couple of years ago, we even stopped at Six Flags Magic Mountain to go on a few rides. It was hot
that day, and we started running around and squirting water at each other from our plastic squeeze bottles. People couldn’t
believe what they were seeing—a celebrity doing the same things they like to do, having fun with friends and family.

My dad learned how to live every day like it was his last when he was fighting in Vietnam. He knew he was lucky if he survived
yesterday. He knew that when he said good-bye to a friend, it might be the last time he ever saw him. Maybe the circumstances
forced things to an extreme level, but he made every moment as rip-roaring as he could. He went hell for broke.

After I made
Last Holiday
, a journalist asked me what I would do if someone told me I had only three weeks to live. My answer would still be the same.
I’d go hell for broke, too. I’d definitely spend time with my family and friends. Then I’d probably go somewhere I really
wanted to go, like a safari in Africa or the Great Wall of China. Or I’d just hang out in Jamaica and drink a Red Stripe and
relax. Just enjoy the water. I would enjoy nature. I’d look at the sky, swim, and hold babies. Since I wouldn’t have time
to have one, I’d hold my little nephew. And watch the kids laugh, ’cause they always crack me up when they laugh. They’ll
laugh at anything. I’d seek out the simple pleasures, then get ready to get on up out of here.

And I’d have no regrets. I would not change a thing.

If I ran into a nineteen-year-old version of myself, I’d just tell her to live, full out. I might also tell her to go ahead
and have a few babies and not worry about the timing of it. But mostly I’d tell her that she’s stronger than she thinks, and
she shouldn’t doubt herself on her path. I’d say:

“Dana. Do you know who you
are
? Guess who you get to be! And guess what, you even get to lose
weight! No, you good, you good. You just keep doing your thing!”

And I’d say the same thing to you:

Celebrate. Make every moment count. Walk tall. Wear your crown with pride.