My Tango Diaries

It looks like I will finally be able to rejoin the tango community and start going to milongas again. Hubby has informed me that I'm getting grumpy with all this isolation and it's time to be social again.  Masking will still be mandatory for me since I'm a caregiver, though masks seem to have fallen out of favor in my local milongas. We do have vaccinated-only events and I'll probably stick to those.  Hopefully my nerves won't get the better of me. I haven't danced in so long. I stopped dancing due to illness more than a year before COVID hit. I'm out of practice and not as steady as I once was. I've started up solo practice again and I'll probably start out by going to practicas rather than milongas. Just to get my tango-legs, as it were. I'm hopeful. It's been a long few years. I lost my mother, her mother and then her father. I've lost three tango friends, including my best friend in tango. I think losing my friend Renee delayed me ev...

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky of night." –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince Our tango community has lost one of its mothers. Margaret, and her husband Vance, were two of the first people I met in tango. Engaging and supportive - they both helped spread the 'gospel of tango' here in Austin and nearly everywhere they travelled. I had no idea at the time, almost a year and a half ago, how much they had done to support and expand this group. If you've ever traveled here for the Austin Spring Tango Festival, then you probably saw them - welcoming everyone, checking and double-checking details, and dancing when time permitted. Margaret was a graceful and very gentle soul. She had a gift for bringing people together. She had a soothing presence in stressful situations (an essential skill when organizing events like tango festivals). And no...