Two sisters reunite for Siblings Day
When the Northern Advocate put the call out yesterday for siblings to mark National Siblings Day today, Shayni Couch, fresh out of quarantine following a secret US transit, was the perfect candidate.
Having completed two weeks’ quarantine after flying in from America, Couch was enroute to Whanga¯ rei with her 3-year-old to surprise her sister, Tianna, when she was notified of the post.
Couch, 31, has had quite the journey over recent years; first losing her American husband during an extreme sport accident while she was pregnant with their son and then being separated from her family on the other side of the world during a global pandemic.
But throughout it all despite the distance was her sister, Tianna Hawkins.
“She has always been there for me and she came to America when my husband passed away. She messages all the time and misses us,” she said.
It was her father-in-law who arranged for Hawkins, 25, to fly over for his son’s funeral as a surprise for Couch.
“He just told me to go to the airport to pick up some random people, which I thought was odd,” she recalled. “Then my sister walks out of the doors and I had a full freak-out. This [surprising her sister in Whanga¯ rei] is payback!” she laughed.
As well as her sister, Couch’s mother and father and their partners also live in Whanga¯ rei. She described herself as a “total nomad” and said, with her husband into extreme sports and, as a sky diver herself, they had travelled a lot. After Lincoln’s Whanga¯ rei birth, mother and child had travelled the world with her sky-diving gear and he had clocked up 11 countries before his first birthday.
She was last in New Zealand around a year ago before returning to America to be with her new partner, a pilot, and Lincoln’s American family. With Hawkins’ partner, she had concocted the plan for a surprise visit using her return ticket.
Quarantining had been “interesting” with a 3-year-old and she had been keeping busy making daily video blogs, which she then sent to her friends and family, excluding her sister, at the end of each day.
“It kept us entertained and motivated me to do cool stuff with him.”
Following their release from isolation on Thursday, she had been sorting her visa before heading north. Her dad’s partner had seen the Northern Advocate Facebook post and notified her as she was driving north.
“My sister’s partner has organised for them to take his kids to the park and I’m just going to be there. She’s going to get such a shock,” said Couch, adding that she had kept up the pretense by avoiding some of her sister’s daily calls and having her partner send photos from America.
“Although we have a big age gap and I was a teenager when she was a kid and then I went off to uni, we’ve become really close
and created this awesome relationship in our adult years with her supporting me through losing my husband and having my son. She’s always had an awesome bond with him and she misses us.”
“Where’s Aunty T?” piped up a little voice from the background.
“Soon,” replied his mother. “We’re going to see Aunty T soon.”
And then came the moment . . .
As Hawkins approached the Town Basin playground, Couch popped out the tunnel slide with Lincoln on her lap. “Hello!” she called. There was a stunned silence before Hawkins dropped to her knees weeping. Couch ran into her arms and the sisters embraced.
“I just had no idea,” said a still shocked Hawkins, minutes later.
“I’m feeling very emotional. It’s like, ‘Oh my God!’.”
Couch was hoping to spend several weeks in New Zealand and had no plans other than to spend time with her family.