Her oceanfront home is bathed in the faint notes of an ancient perfume, a divine blend of sandalwood and frankincense that transports visitors to faraway lands, compels them to disconnect from wearying workday hassles. Never mind that South Beach is screaming just a blocks away, that power freaks are gunning their steroid-fueled boats just beyond the dock, that a phone is ringing incessantly somewhere in the house.

There is something soothing about Estefan’s Star Island, Florida, mansion, where she lives with her husband, Emilio – a coolness and quiet that conjures the temples of ancient times. She enters what she calls her sanctuary – the sitting room, the first floor of the two-story
addition to the mansion – wearing pistachio green stretch pants and a matching Oriental silk blouse, her red mane in a ponytail and her China-doll feet bare against terra-cotta tiles.

If there is a calming spiritual energy to the house, she tells you, it was by design.

"There are a lot of things in here that literally came from temples," says Estefan, who these days is basking in the simple pleasures of being at home. A year ago, she was in the middle of a killer hundred-city world tour, sprinting from stage to stage, hotel room to hotel room with her 2-year-odl daughter and 16-year-old son in tow. She vows it will be a long time before she lets anything else tear her, or them, away from home for such a maddening stretch.

Right now, she wants nothing more than a walk among the palms in her backyard, sit by the edge of her baby Emily’s wading pool, watching her splash up a storm, and kick back on one of the white half-moon couches in her sanctuary.

This recent two-story addition with an upstairs theater (Quincy Jones, Emily’s godfather, hooks them up with new releases before they hit the video stores) boasts soaring ceilings, a horseshoe-shaped dining table on a carved wooden platform that was once part of a temple in Thailand, shuttered windows from an old house in India that hang like artwork in the sitting room, an Indian throne, opium beds, statues of Buddha and Krishna. And candles – dozens of them, tall and short pillars, all white, clustered on every tabletop. Halfburned incense sticks also abound.

She’s looking forward to Nochebuena, when everybody will gather around the
horseshoe-shaped table, which seats her extended family of more than twenty people.

"The table was designed so the whole family could be together," she says. "We do a Cuban Christmas all the way, arroz con frijoles y lechón. The holidays become more and more important as Emilio’s parents get older and as my mom gets older because we know one day things are going to be different, so we cherish our time with them. That’s why we moved Emilio’s parents to the island (they have their own house just across the road), and that’s why Emilio goes to see them every day when he comes home, regardless of what time it is."

The holidays are also a time of heightened connection to spirituality in the Estefan household. Not that they’re specifically religious, however.

"Did you notice the statue of the Chinese man in prayer with the lotus flower by the
entrance? Emilio put a rosary around it that was blessed by the Pope," says Estefan. "That’s our take on religion."

Estefan at 40 is a woman at the height of her power, a woman who has not only succeeded beyond her wildest dreams but who has also tackled adversity to the ground so many times she no longer fears it.

She lived through a painful childhood, nursing her ailing father and helping raise her younger sister while her mother struggled to pay the rent. She fought her way out of a
wheelchair after a 1990 bus accident on a snowy Pennsylvania highway left her with a broken back. She turned tragedy into victory by fighting for new boater safety legislation after a college student died when he rammed his rented Jet Ski into her power boat.

Through it all, she says, she has grown more and more spiritual. "All of my life I have questioned, questioned, questioned. At this point I feel all of my questions have been answered." It is a remarkable declaration, but coming from Estefan, somehow believable. "I would ask, why is there suffering, why are there these rules, why is there religion, who is God, who am I? But every day I have more faith, and faith is the answer to all of those questions."

She’s sipping a cafecito in her sanctuary, a morning sea glistening blue in the background, and she is explaining her awakenning.

"It was a very slow process. The bus accident had a lot to do with it because it really threw me into myself. I see proof as I move my life and my actions more in the direction of my
beliefs."

But don’t ask her to detail her beliefs – they are a jumble of Eastern and Western philosophy, like the Chinese man with the rosary around his neck.

"There are no rules to it. It is not a specific religion. Religion has destroyed more than it has helped. You see it on the front page. How can anybody kill people in the name of God? How can a church exclude members of the human race because of their sexuality? However, I
respect all beliefs. Because if you truly follow Jesus Christ or Buddha or Krishna or whomever, their messages was the same."

Estefan follows a simple rule: "You have to be positive. I have a teenage son who is always out with his friends. I could surround myself with negative thoughts about what could happen to him on the roads, with all the drunken drivers. But instead I see him surrounded by angels who guide him home every time he goes out."

She says she learned the power of positivity the hard way. "All my life, I had three big fears that consumed me – that I would wind up in a wheelchair, that I would have a terrible
accident on the tour bus, and that we’d hit somebody with our boat. All three things
happened. So you tell me. I think we have the power to make positive things happen in our lives. We just can’t put negative things out there."

After a triumphant career spanning two decades, after selling more than 45 million records worldwide, after she and her music mogul husband were named one of the wealthiest
Hispanic families in America (worth more than $170 million), you’d think Estefan might be ready to start slowing down.

Instead, she’s limbering up for new challenges. She’s going after movies now.

"The reason I want to try movies is that, really, in my career I’ve done everything there is to do," says Estefan. "And I do love what I do. I’ll always be a singer and I’ll always be a songwriter. But I feel like I have to grow creatively. It’s a natural progression."

She says she may be sealing the deal on her first role, a spiritual comedy in which she would play the best friend opposite one of her favorite film actresses. She isn’t ready to
divulge details, except to say she doesn’t want to play a Latina in her first forays into film because she doesn’t want to be forever pegged.

"I would hope the first role would be any other ethnicity than a Latina. If it’s a good Latin role, then definitely, I would do it. But most of the Latin women roles are so stereotypical," Estefan explains. "One good role I had to turn down because I was seven months pregnant was Michael Douglas’ lawyer in Disclosure. It was one of the first times I saw a Latina
portrayed as intelligent and without a thick accent."

Estefan says she intends to make careful choices as she develops her acting career. She wants her work to carry positive messages, above all.

"Movies are like mass meditation. We bombed ourselves with violence, so how can we
expect our children to be better than that? We see kids younger and younger killing each other. I believe that thought creates reality, so when all of us are looking at these things, these thoughts are out there creating negative things. We are creative beings, and I believe we create collectively."

Besides giving her own creativity a new outlet, Estefan wants to make movies because they won’t take her away from home for an entire year at a time, the way concert touring does.

"You might have to be away six or eight weeks, but that’s about it. And when I go, I will, of course, take my kids with me," says Estefan, who vows to stay away from concert tours for a few years because she doesn’t want to tear her daughter, Emily, away from home now.

When her son, Nayib, was six and Estefan was embarking on her Let It Loose tour, she left him home with Emilio because he didn’t want to leave his school friends and his Little League. She’ll never do that again, she says.

"I was miserable. I was flying home every weekend, and they were flying out to meet me in different cities. It was really hard on me, and I’m not going to miss out on my kids growing up." Estefan’s priority is being a good mom, though she’s not into lecturing her kids about anything.

"You can talk to them until you’re blue in the face and you can give them a million rules, but if they see you constantly breaking the rules, it won’t work. They live by your example. What my kids have is an example of a mother and father who are united and share responsibilities."

Nayib is hardly the typical Latino, Estefan says with pride. "Latin women tend to raise men who are big babies. They think that you have to do everything for them and that they are the king of the house. I’ve been trying to counteract that my whole life. I’ve tried to instill in him respect for women. I tell him to just be honest. You can be anything you want to be as long as you are up front."

Emily won’t grow up to be the stereotypical Latina, either. Not if Estefan has any say.

"She is going to receive a message about being a strong woman because she is surrounded by strong woman. She also is going to receive a message about the roles men and women play. She sees her father get up every Sunday at the crack of dawn and clean the terraces. She sees that I’m the one who deals with the tax attorney and the accountant."

Even with movie projects on the burner and a new dance album due out in the spring ("It’s kind of "Conga" for the nineties," she says), Estefan insists her main focus, now more than ever, is her family and her home. Her top goal?

"Normalcy," she says. "I just want normalcy."

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