The fact that I have never totaled my car while driving with Leta , is purely an act of divine intervention.  Leta has refused to sit in a car seat or keep her seat belt on for the past 10 years.  Instead she perches herself between the two front seats, usually with one arm around my neck and the other positioned to touch or grab whatever she finds interesting at that moment.  Sometimes that can be her medicine bag that she decides to open, sometimes that can be the food just bought at the grocery store,  but more often it something the other kids have left behind in the car that day,  a soccer ball, a hairbrush, a water bottle.  a long lost lollipop stuck under the seat.  So with my left hand on the wheel,  my right hand was usually fending off Leta from either crawling into the front seat or putting something in her mouth, or grabbing a sharp object that she is moments away from flinging at either my head or one of the other passengers. luckily, the back seats are safety locked, otherwise I am sure Leta would have opened them by now while speeding along the highway.

The only remedy I have for controlling Leta in the car is food, specifically Cheetohs.  Of course, these don’t last forever or all go into Leta’s mouth.  They often end up ground into  my car, as well as crushed into my hair.  The dogs love being in the car on these occasions because they act as a vacuum cleaner, greedily licking the carpet moments after Leta has crunched through another bag of chips.  Needless to say,  my car has always been a source of contention between my husband and I.  He just could not understand how I could drive in such filth.  But he also wasn’t in the trenches every day like I was, trying to get kids to school, to playdates etc….  Years into my life with Leta, my car had become quite an embarrassment.  It was a breeding ground of  all types of germs, not just food.  Leta freely peed, pooped and on occasion when very sick, threw up multiple times in this car.  Truth be told, It was a toxic waste dump.  It was not until my son turned 16 and wanted to learn how to drive that I got  rid of “the beast”.  Jack shamed me into buying a new car , a Volvo XC90, because he flat out refused to learn how to drive in a car that should, in his opinion, be condemned by the Red Cross.

I have two favorite memories of how crazy driving with Leta could be.  The first was our weekly 45 minute drives back to Camphill on Sundays.  As much as Leta loved school, she loved home more and would get very angry that she had to leave us.  The tantrum would usually begin once we were off the Pa Turnpike and she would recognize the winding country roads leading to school.  At this point, she would do the sign for sorry,  a circular hand motion rubbing her stomach……”Sorry, Sorry, Sorry” she would repeatedly say and gesture.  Which always broke my heart, because I felt like she thought we didn’t love her.  Usually, when Leta’s guilt trip didn’t stop us from turning around, Leta would escalate with her favorite car tantrum.  She would attack me in the drivers seat.  She would pull my hair repeatedly, really hard, sometimes so hard that clumps would be pulled out.  When the chip defense ran thin, and she began the full hair attack,  I would usually have to call for back up from one of my other kids in the car.  It was always safer for me to do the drive back to school with either Lucy or Ava there  to entertain Leta.  Their tried and true technique was to distract Leta with family pictures taken on my I-phone.  This always stopped Leta from attacking me, but Lucy and Ava would now be on the frontlines and get their fair share of pinches or hair pulling.  Sometimes, I would have to pull the car over, just to pry Leta’s strong hands out of my hair or the girls.

One summer day, Ava was the “designated back up” for our trip to Camphill.   At first she hemmed and hawed about going, but then when I bribed her with chocolate, she  got in the car.  As I finished packing Leta’s things in the back,  I looked at  my sweet Ava and laughed.    There she was, dressed  in Jack’s lacrosse helmet, a thick winter coat,  soccer goalie gloves and a tennis racquet held firmly in front of her face.  Ava was armed for combat.  Leta thought this was hysterical and was actually a perfect angel the entire car ride on that afternoon.

But when things got bad they could get very very bad.  After a market run in Maine one day, we were driving back from the store and Leta decided she was hungry.  She scurried to the back of the suburban and grabbed a flimsy plastic dish of deviled eggs that I had hoped to serve at a picnic lunch.  Leta ignored all my warnings and began eating the eggs,  I tried to get Lucy to grab them away from  her, but lucy refused to  engage.  Leta was covered in yellow yolk.  I think “Ava Brava”, as we liked to call her, wrestled the eggs from Leta.  But then we had another problem.  Leta was pissed.  And she lunged for my hair in a counter-assault.  And to make things worse, she started taking all her clothes off , including her wet pull up.   Now I was covered in yellow mayonnaise deviled egg mess and trying to get home quickly.   But no such luck.   I heard a siren and looked in my rear mirror, and  saw a flashing red and blue lights behind me.    I realized that in the deviled eggs chaos, I had forgotten to slow down to the mandatory 10 mph on entering our beach community.  And the ever watchful police had caught me.  I dutifully pulled over, and watched the police officer walk up to my car.  How was I ever going to explain this one?  I can’t even imagine what I looked like. My hair was sticking straight up with clots of egg on it and my face.    Leta was butt naked, also covered in deviled eggs and worse, she was not buckled  in a car seat.  I knew I was going to get an expensive ticket but the thought crossed my mind that I might even go to jail!  I rolled down my window and the officer looked in.  I sputtered out how sorry I was for speeding and that I was a bit distracted by my special needs daughter.  He took a look into the back seat and his face of disbelief confirmed my suspicions.  We are one crazy family.  All he said to me was, “Do you need help, mam?”  I confirmed that I was ok and he insisted on giving us a police escort home.  Oh, the perks of Leta.