Ruaa Sabek

The Pandemic Put the Family in Dire Straits

When the pandemic hit, there were no jobs. Even my husband, they reduce his hours. He worked at a restaurant, and like all the restaurants, some closed, some just do the pick up, some just reduced hours. It was like a tough time. My husband was working 40 hours a week, and in the pandemic, they just fall down to 24 hours a week. His income was cut almost in half.

But because my husband was still working, we don’t get any unemployment. They help the people who don't work. But because my husband, his place was open – they never closed – just reduced his hours, we didn’t get that. The good thing, we got Medicaid, sorry, or Medicare? Medicaid. I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’m a new U.S. citizen, so some things is still not clear for me.

We also have food stamps. And in the pandemic, they increased the amount. And this is really good, because during the pandemic, the prices get very crazy. Like, for example, before the pandemic, I go to any grocery store and for 100 bucks, you buy your stuff for two weeks or three weeks. But now, if you spend 100 bucks, it's for three or four days. So, this was good during the pandemic. They also help us with the rent assistance. They helped us with a three-month payment when we were overdue. They help us. I have a fish memory, but I remember this.

I remember they sent for us $300 or $400 three or four times [in the monthly extended Child Tax Credit], and it was really helpful. We used it for expenses—the bills, the food, everything at home. The kids were growing up and they need more stuff. Diapers. Milk. More clothes. In the holidays, they need more stuff. There’s laundry. Cleaning stuff. Like every home, even if you try to reduce your needs, you still need too much stuff.

We have one car. Me and my husband, we share our car, and it just stopped one day and we don’t know what the problem is. So we take it to the mechanic. And I remember they told us it needed a new transmission and it was going to cost about $2,400. We don’t have this in the pocket. We can’t afford a new car. So, they tried to order a transmission for us. I remember the day the [stimulus] check came, and that helped us a lot with this.

We have central heat at home, but for some reason, in the second floor, it doesn’t work good. So we got two heaters for our room and for the kids room. It cost a couple hundred, so [the payments] helped us with that. I saved a little bit for other years or to take the kids to the beach. So, because I didn't have income by myself [at the start of the pandemic] and my husband had the income for the daily basis stuff and the rent, and it was reduced, [these payments] really helped a lot for us.

When I think about that period, I think without the [government] help, it will be very bad. If I am [just] with my husband, everything will be ok, we can handle it. But with the kids, it was a really tough time.

Community Is a Critical Lifeline

I started working at the same place as my husband. He’s the manager of a fast food restaurant for 20 years. They needed a cashier on the morning shift. So I was working 10 to 4, 10 to 5 a few days a week. And on the days I was working the morning shift, my husband worked the night shift. We live across the street from the restaurant. So it was a good position for me. My husband was with the kids while I'm working, and I do the same while he's working.

Usually, I take them with me everywhere – to do the shopping. To Walmart. To the grocery store. On the weekend, we usually go outside. The kids like to have fun. We go to the playground. Sometimes we go in the summertime to the beach. In the pandemic, I never take my kids out to any place, even when I go to the grocery store. I remember I was wearing a raincoat over my clothes. I was wearing gloves. I put on the mask. And when I come home, on the porch, before I come inside, I take off my raincoat, I take off everything, and put it in a trash bag outside and close it. I have sanitizer. I wash everything with white vinegar. I take a shower and clean myself before I touch my kids. It was a huge thing. Even when my husband came back from his work, he did the same procedure –- take off all his clothes on the porch. I did his laundry by itself because he was in touch with people every day at the restaurant. We tried to protect the kids as much as we could.

With two kids, it’s very hard to stay at home for a long time. They feel bored. They draw. They play. We do puzzles. We have all the toys for their age. But they still feel bored. So, if it was a good day, I went outside with them and just walked. We live on a small street. I just go out with them a little bit and go back. I have a friend with two girls. They are like almost in the same age of my kids. So we start to see each other after the three months. We don’t want any chance to get the virus because when the pandemic started, it was very dangerous. Everything was not clear. A lot of people passed away.

My daughter was crying. “Mommy, I want to go to Walmart. Mommy, I want to go to Acme [grocery store.]” I had to say, “Not now.” It was hard for her.

When they reduced my husband’s hours, I needed to work. So, I go to the daycare about three blocks from my house and enroll my kids. I enrolled Perla in Philadelphia Head Start. She can go for free. I enrolled my little one, he was to turn two in September, in daycare. I was paying $250 per week for my son, September, October, November, December. And I have to pay for after care hours for Perla, too, something like $15 or $25 per day for after care. I was talking to the director there. I had a balance with them, and I said I need some help to pay. I’m organized. I know how much comes in and what we need to spend. And I’m doing the best I can with them. I asked for a payment agreement. She asked me, “How many hours do you work?” I said I work 25 hours. And she told me, “You are eligible for CCIS.” [Child Care Information Services subsidy]

I never hear about that. It’s a program for kids whose parents work, either full time or part-time, and they pay for the daycare. So, I enrolled in December 2020, and they start to pay for my baby in January 2021. After that, I was paying $28 or $30 a week. That’s it. Oh my God, it’s a huge help for me. When you talk about paying $1,000 a month for one child and about $300 a month for the other child, $1,300 is not a small amount for me. At my job, they were paying me $11 or $12 an hour. When I enrolled [in CCIS,] this have a good effect, because I have much more money in the pocket. I can manage that for other needs, like bills for the electricity or bills for the gas. It was a good help for us. I feel like, Oh my God, like, peace of mind.

I visited the office just the first time I enrolled the kids with it. I take for them all the documents that they want -- they want a copy of their birth certificate, their social security, our pay stubs, proof of residence. Oh, this is tough.

It was very stressful. Before, I was thinking I just wanted to be off with my youngest one and sit with him at home, because the oldest one was already enrolled in a free program and I can’t handle $1,300 per month just for the daycare. It was almost all of my income, and sometimes maybe more.

The director was very helpful. That’s what I always think about. In the community, we need some people just to make things simple. I am here for eight years now. I am an American citizen. But everything is new for me. You don’t know about any laws or community resources. I have my church community. Sometimes if I need anything, they recommend something for me. For example, my church recommended this program, Public Health Management Corporation, when I was pregnant. A nurse visited my home every two weeks. She helped me a lot with resources. They helped me with WIC [Women Infants and Children.] She actually go with me, I was pregnant with my second baby, and she helped me with all the paperwork to do the application for food stamps. To do that on my own, it will be too much. It’s not that the language is the problem, just I don’t know what I have to put there. I just need some instructions to make sure I don’t put in the wrong information. She was with me step by step. She was very patient. We were there between one and two hours.

During COVID, we start to meet virtual. They help me find clothes for the kids. They have a diaper bank. They are with the kids through age 5. So I learned to always ask for help. If I go to a health center, I ask about it. If I go to school for the kids, I ask about it. At the library. Through that, I find resources. It isn’t easy. It takes time.

I wanted to enroll my children in a Catholic school, like me and my husband. That’s how we grew up. I know Catholic school is private school, and it costs a lot of money. So I was a little bit disappointed. I returned to the same director of the daycare. She told me I could apply for a scholarship. The name is CSF [privately-funded Children’s Scholarship Fund.] They pay for school from kindergarten to the eighth grade. You have to be eligible—they ask for the taxes for the last three years. They ask for your pay stub or W2 every six months. So I do all the paperwork the year before, and my daughter was accepted for that. They pay almost 75, 80 percent of her tuition. And when one child is enrolled, the other will be enrolled automatically.

I want to recommend this for everybody I see because CCIS is a great program for the moms and dads who really need to work.

The Support She Needed to Make the Jump from Cashier to Personal Banker

In 2023, My husband was still working reduced hours. He doesn’t have more time, like before the pandemic. So, I needed to work full-time to support our family. Everything, the prices get high for some reason. The kids’ Catholic school. I have too much expenses, so we have to do it. At the restaurant, I was there three or four years, and the highest pay there was $16 an hour and they don’t give benefits. And the thing with being a cashier, I don’t have a regular schedule. Sometimes, they need me on the weekend.

I was hearing about this program from the social media, Instagram community page—OIC in Philadelphia. [Opportunities Industrialization Center, Inc.] They have a free program to train people to get a job. They have a bank work program, a nursing program, a cooking program, medical administration. I had to take an English test and a math test. The first month was all virtual training from nine to two p.m., three days a week. So it was good, because I already drop my kids at school at 8 and need to pick them up at 3. And I could adjust my work schedule. Then they start us on resumes and interviews for work. I finished the program and already got some job offers.

I now [work as] a personal banker at PNC Bank. If you want to open an account, if you wanted to get a credit card, if you want to get a mortgage loan or auto loan, if you wanted any other kind of account, I will help you. It’s a lot of responsibility. It's not easy. But I like to learn. I'm hungry to learn everything. I feel it was a big break with the kids, with my motherhood, with everything. And now, I just want to continue with that. I started January 2, 2024. It’s 8:30 to five. They pay me $45,000 per year. I made about $20 or $21 an hour. I have benefits, like a retirement plan, health insurance, life insurance. The whole package of benefits. This is a good opportunity for my family. This year, I will pay a little bit more child care because I start a new work, and I need to update everything.

I don't worry about my kids. This is a good schedule for me. So that's what I need. I need a stable career with a good schedule and good benefits. I don't have a college degree. I do some college in my country, [I studied English at the University of Damascus] but here actually, I was thinking to do something, because I just heard about the university. You don't have to pay too much money. It will be online. I am interested in administration. takes four years to have the degree. So, but it will be good for me—my career, my future, because when you have more degrees, it will be good for you.

The Future She Dreams About for Her Family

It’s not easy to have an easy life. It's not easy to have all what you want. For me, the first thing is education for my kids. I want to give them all what I can, or maybe more. That's what I really focus on. Because they're still very young, and I feel like they need me. So, this is the thing. The other thing, what I was thinking of, the community or the government, they provide a lot of help or assistance to the people. But always I talk about one thing -- we need more program for the kids. For example, more sports, maybe art. I need my kids to enroll in this stuff because we don't have family here. So I need them to be busy with useful stuff. When I was searching for this, all this stuff is really costly. Like if I want football for my son or art or gymnastics classes, all this stuff is really costly. I don’t know if this is possible. I know that we have a lot of [recreation] centers, at almost every playground. But they don’t all have programs for kids. Active programs so they don’t need to be on their phones or tablets. Just like they provide food stamps, cash assistance to pay some of our bills, which is really very important. But the kids, 5 to 12, we need to make them more busy with useful stuff. I can't afford to enroll my kids in many activities—they go Saturdays to art class, and it's actually a program with the school. I pay just like a little bit—$100 for three months. I just have to choose. Like for summertime. My neighborhood is safe, but we don't have a lot of kids. It's more like elderly people around us. It’s an urban neighborhood with a lot of cars.

I need to work a full-time job. My husband needs to work a full-time job if we want a better life for our kids. But before, I picked the kids up at three from school, then spent all afternoon with them, all the evening. I was more engaged. We do all the homework together. We talk. Since I started work full-time, it's a little bit hard, because I have just like two hours. I get home around 5:45, because I need to come by bus. Sometimes that takes 30 minutes. Sometimes 35 minutes. So we change our clothes, then have our dinner at seven. Then we have just one more hour to do everything. The only day that we spend as a family—me, the kids and my husband —it's just Sunday.

So what I try to do, it is just like quality time. Even if we don't have too much time together, I just try to make sure when we get time together, it will be with no phones. We eat together. We play together. Sometimes I feel I'm very tired to jump with my kids when we go out, but I feel I need to.