Getting Real With Shadra Bruce
Growing up, there was a significant enough age difference between my sister and I (I am 5 years older than her) that we did not have a lot in common. When she was starting kindergarten, I was chasing boys in fifth grade; when she was chasing boys in 5th grade, I was getting a job and thinking about college.
Time is an equalizer of sorts; the year she had her first child was the year I began dating Dave and playing the role of mom to his three kids – so we entered the motherhood phase together. By then, we were both just wrestling with identity and budgets and relationships and the age difference no longer mattered. It was as adults that we became close friends.
When I married Dave, she stood up with me; when I came back from my honeymoon and discovered I was pregnant, she was excited to tell me she had found out she was pregnant before I got married but didn’t want to overshadow it. We shared pregnancy together and her twins and my son Parker were born 6 weeks apart, followed two weeks later by our baby sister’s daughter. Four babies in 8 weeks!
The bond between us grew even stronger, and we spent so much time together that our kids were as comfortable in their auntie’s home as they were in their own.
Life took us in different directions – Tiana moved out of Boise to the suburbs and eventually went back to work full time. We decided to move to New York. Our mother’s illness, though, brought us back together for a few years.
When Dave and I moved to New York the second time, I didn’t think much about the distance it would create between Tiana and I. We’d always kept in touch, had always managed to stay connected.
And then we arrived at her home in Utah and our kids glommed on to each other as if they’d been starving for the family connection they’d been without for four years. So I wonder, for all that I love about New York, is it more important to be in a place I love or with people I can’t live without?
