10 Crochet Muffins, Knitted Apple Pies and Other Cozy Handmade Thanksgiving Table Trends You Can Make at Home Before November 26

My landlord texted me in the ER, “Hope you feel better, Anna! Just a reminder that rent’s due on the 1st, even if you’re in a hospital bed. Rules are rules. Get better.” I was so furious but like, what could I do? I’d come in at 2am with an appendix that had to come out. Plus, I have no medical insurance.
5 weeks later the bill arrived: $14,200. I’d already paid rent out of savings, so I started crocheting Thanksgiving toys for the Saturday craft market to put something toward it. At $8 a turkey, I knew it was a long run. I thought that if I could work more, I could earn more and so I could, you know, pay the big bill. I was so naive.

Today, billing called. “Your balance is $0. Your mom paid.” I don’t have a mother. I mean, I did, yes, but she left this world when I was 4. I don’t remember her and my father didn’t tell much about her.
Anyway, that woman who paid my bill was Ruth, 71, who had the table next to mine at the market. By the third Saturday, I’d sold 34 turkeys and put $270 toward the bill. Ruth bought my last 6 and asked about the folded paper sticking out of my tote.
It was the hospital statement, and I’d been carrying it around for 3 weeks like it might shrink. She read it and asked, “Did anybody tell you about financial assistance?” Nobody had. She’d spent 30 years in that hospital’s patient accounts office, and she knew a nonprofit hospital had to offer a program for patients without insurance.

The next Sunday she came to my apartment with a folder and we filled out the application at my kitchen table. She complained the whole time about the parking garage and her grandkids fighting over my pumpkins.
The program cut the bill to $1,860, and my $270 came off that. I figured I’d pay the remaining $1,590 at $50 a month. Then Ruth called the billing office and paid it by card, with the account number from my statement.
When the clerk asked how she knew me, she said, “She’s like a daughter to me.” The clerk wrote “mother.” I called Ruth, ready to argue. “Oh, hush,” she said. “I spent 30 years telling people what they owed. It was nice to tell one person it was zero.”