Modern Love The Podcast is supported by

Produced by the ILAB at WBUR Boston.

From The New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, Lost, and Redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakrabardi.

So you're on public transportation and you notice a cute stranger.

Usually when you get to your stop, that's where the story ends.

But for Rachel Newman, things went differently.

Rachel's essay is read by Kelly McCreary, who stars in Grey's Anatomy on ABC.

I met him on the bus.

The number nine was my daily commute from the University District of Seattle to the Reneer Valley,

where I worked in an overcrowded elementary school.

Because I got on early in the route, I always settled in the back,

a prime people watching spot as we traveled through Seattle's varied neighborhoods.

I was in the middle of a short-lived crafty period.

I usually spent the 30-minute ride crocheting hats.

But my crocheting patience was limited, and each hat emerged to hastily, too small to fit anyone but a newborn.

I didn't know many people in Seattle, and none with young children.

So the hats accumulated in a teetering stack in my bedroom corner.

I was always on the lookout for random babies to whom I could give them.

When I wasn't looking for babies, I would stare at the back of the guy who regularly sat in the middle of the bus on the left-hand side.

I never saw him get on, so I didn't know his face.

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