ARLINGTON — She’s Grandma in the Window.
At first, they called her that because they didn’t know her name. Yet her wave — two hands delicately raised with wiggling fingers — is familiar to nearly every student on the afternoon bus route between the Arlington middle and high schools.
For five years the white-haired woman has waved from her dining room window every school day around 2:40 p.m. That’s when the buses roll by her house on the corner of 207th Street and 80th Avenue NE. The students and bus drivers wave back.
If Grandma missed a day or two, she always returned soon after.
Until a month ago, when she disappeared from the window.
After years of her signature wave, students didn’t see her for weeks.
She finally came back last Tuesday. When Bus 7 rolled by, the middle schoolers waved around large letters they’d pressed against the windows: “Welcome home.”
The message was the latest in a string of kind gestures between a grandmother, a bus driver and a bus full of Arlington students.
During the last week of September, driver Carol Mitzelfeldt and the children on Bus 7 realized that their Grandma in the Window had been gone longer than usual.
“She’s just somebody we always looked for,” Mitzelfeldt said. “The kids on the bus were so concerned. They missed her.”
She went to the house on the corner with flowers and a simple card: “Thinking of you.” It was addressed to “Grandma in the Window” and signed “School bus #7.”
Mitzelfeldt learned that Grandma’s name is Louise Edlen. She’s 93, set to turn 94 on New Year’s Eve, and has lived in Arlington for 17 years with her husband, Dave.
Louise Edlen had a stroke on Sept. 25. Then she came down with pneumonia, which prolonged her stay at Arlington Health and Rehabilitation.
The Edlens were at the recovery center when Mitzelfeldt knocked on the door. Daughter Susan answered and brought the card and flowers to her mom.
The next school day, there was a sign in the Edlens’ window. It said “Thank You,” with big hearts on either side of the words.
The kids on the bus got excited, Mitzelfeldt said. Conversations and fidgeting stopped as they turned their attention toward the sign.
They wanted to do something more. They posed for a photo waving out the windows of Bus 7. Mitzelfeldt ordered a poster-sized print of the photo and brought it to the recovery center. It came with a card signed by the kids.
Dave Edlen’s favorite note in the card reads, “I don’t know you but get better soon.” Similar messages are scrawled all over the colorful paper. “Get better soon Nanna,” someone wrote.
Louise Edlen has her own busload of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She wears a mother’s ring with 13 stones to represent her sons and daughters. Most are from her first marriage. She and Dave Edlen married 53 years ago, a second chance for both of them, and she had three more children.
They now have 30 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren.
While she stayed home with the kids, he worked various jobs — a truck driver, a salesman, a credit manager, a broker.
He retired four times before it stuck. Now he helps care for his wife, enjoys time with the next three generations of their family, and as a hobby, cuts and polishes gems. He gave Mitzelfeldt, the bus driver, an elegant pendant he’d made with a white stone set in silver.
Louise Edlen became Grandma in the Window by chance, her husband said. She happened to be standing in the dining room as the buses went by one day about five years ago.
She waved.
The window is behind a tall wood fence where an apple tree occasionally drops fruit onto the sidewalk. A few of the kids noticed her there and waved back. So she returned the next day around the same time and got more waves. It became her afternoon routine.
“Just as much as the kids are an encouragement to her, she’s an encouragement to the kids,” Mitzelfeldt said.
The cards and poster were meant to be simple gifts, nothing to make a fuss about, she said. But something about Grandma in the Window seems to go straight to people’s hearts.
“I have a grandma still alive who I love dearly and she taught me to treat others the way you would want to be treated,” Mitzelfeldt said. “If this can be a reminder to someone to wave or smile or take a second for someone else, maybe that’s a good thing.”
While his wife was recovering, Dave Edlen kept the poster of Bus 7 in her room at the care center so she could wave to the students.
Mitzelfeldt started visiting every few days. She talked about how much the kids missed Grandma. They compared their mother’s rings, Mitzelfeldt’s five stones next to Louise Edlen’s thirteen. Edlen showed off her famous Grandma in the Window wave.
Mitzelfeldt held her new friend’s hand while the older woman reclined in bed during a visit Oct. 16 at the care center.
“Now we know that you’re Grandma Louise,” she told her. “But all the kids still call you Grandma in the Window.”
It’s hard for Louise Edlen to talk after the stroke. Her words come out slowly, the syllables unclear. Dave Edlen and Mitzelfeldt repeat phrases back to her to make sure they’ve translated correctly.
Louise Edlen looked over at Mitzelfeldt and slowly said one of her short, simple phrases.
“Thank you very much.”
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
