~° The Yin and Yang of Tango°~

               Driving back from my new apartment in Aztec, NM, this morning, I thought about my father.  I’ve been working with him for the last 15 years on his biography. His exploits during the Korean War are a big part of his story. We made a great deal of progress this past Fall when he was finally able to relate some of the more difficult memories that he’s kept to himself for nearly sixty years.

               One tale in particular brought tears to my eyes as I drove. It occurred to me that some of my Chinese tango partners might have fathers who fought in the war on the opposite side. I think that would be an incredible change of state from fathers in arms with weapons to their children armed with tango music and dance steps. I imagined the souls of the men who departed the war finding a way to stay with their comrades in ways we cannot comprehend.

               The time and place of this event was Korea, April 27^th, 1951, and my Dad’s platoon was retreating south. The Chinese Army was not far behind having launched their Spring Offensive. As they headed south they passed a couple of tanks manned by the 555^th Artillery Unit. Normally their canons would be pointed at an upward angle but this time they were pointed straight at the horizon to unload their munitions directly into the oncoming horde. They could not stop the onslaught but they could slow it down enough to buy some time for the men on their side.

               Over the course of fifteen years, my father has tried to make me understand how strong the bond is between soldiers in battle. This morning I realized he succeeded. Dozens of times he’s told me that when a foxhole companion is killed, one who has been a part of a fighting unit that has been living, sleeping and fighting together for months on end, then a part of his foxhole buddies also dies. When he would say, "the connection is stronger even than that of marriage," I would always squirm in my chair, especially when Mom was close by.

               I don’t know what made me think of the 555^th Artillery Unit this morning. Maybe it was because I was driving down Rt. 550 and it was two days after Father’s Day. I thought about Sgt. Alley, the crafty leader of their squad who had probably saved their lives countless times during their deployment, and how he led them east for a half mile instead of continuing to go south where they most certainly would have been overrun by the enemy.

               I thought of the men inside the artillery vehicles who protected them by firing at the advancing army until they were overcome and most probably killed. As I contemplated the number of U.S. soldiers they probably saved by holding their ground in the face of certain death, tears welled up in my eyes.

               I wondered if somehow I hadn’t been entered into the equation. Maybe the cosmic forces of the universe had achieved some sort of balance through me and my Chinese counterparts, the daughters and granddaughters of Red Army combatants. Is it possible that our tango dances can offset the incredible violence and sacrifice that happened on that day?

               I have a vision stuck in my mind of a young man in Africa, living on one bowl of rice every three days. He is sitting on a rock, numb to the hunger, looking out into the great plain and thinking about a place, any place, where someone is enjoying life. I wonder if maybe that thought, that hope, is the only thing keeping him alive. I think it is entirely possible that the threads of our lives are interconnected with the threads of other lives. When we suffer, someone on the other end enjoys and vice versa.

               There you have it, the yin and yang of tango: we do not choose to dance, we are compelled by events beyond our understanding, by forces that transcend the end of life, time and space.