By Caitlin Gibson, Photo: iStock, The Washington Post, January 29, 2022
Andria Hayes-Birchler had barely begun to comprehend her new reality as a single parent before the pandemic hit. In March 2020, she had an 8-month-old infant and a 4-year-old, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband had recently moved from their home in Washington, D.C., to California. What followed was a year and a half of unrelenting crisis as she struggled to balance her career as a research consultant with caring for her two young sons, alone.
So, in September, when her now-6-year-old son finally returned full-time to a first-grade classroom and her 2-year-old was thriving at day care, and Hayes-Birchler found herself inundated with new clients, it felt as if maybe they had crossed a finish line. “Like now we were going to be okay,” she says, “and now I was able to actually establish my baseline as a single parent.”
Then came omicron. In December, her older son’s school abruptly returned to virtual learning. Her younger son was already home — he’d come down with an ear infection, which required antibiotics, which he did not tolerate well, which meant he couldn’t attend day care for 10 days. Then his older brother tested positive for the coronavirus, and the whole family had to begin a lengthy quarantine, and their holiday travel plans to visit family were canceled. (And of course, in the midst of all this, their refrigerator broke.) For 33 days in December and January, Hayes-Birchler found herself home alone with her boys, and unable to work. Again.
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