Subj: Your Recent Emails

Date: 97-10-10 03:05:38 EDT

From: Anil5462

To: KTopham

CC: Anil5462

October 9, l997

Dear Keith,

Thank you for your Emails and thanks for forwarding the Email to Carissa.

I'm sorry to hear that Beverly filed for sole custody. I agree that that the lawsuit would not benefit the children. What are the issues/reasons for Beverly's filing? Has she tried informal negotiations regarding her concerns. More importantly than the lawsuit I think that her gaining sole legal custody would not be good. I have always felt that you have been a good father to Carissa.

From the point of view of my own interests - even assuming total selfishness - I do not like the idea of Beverly gaining custody. This is because it is you who have encouraged Carissa to maintain a relationship with me. Now is a good time to thank you for this regardless of whether I have thanked you before.

My computer is helping with my writing. I plan to learn Visual Basic and I think it may help me develop some applications that I have been of thinking of for a while. I might also purchase a version of Fortran from Microsoft and would have already done so if it were not for the price.

I just got back from the trip I mentioned in the note to Carissa. I have just had four of the most intense days of my life. I was in an early winter storm at the Mountain Lake where I was planning to spend two sun-filled weeks. The whole thing was eerie and intensely beautiful. But a lot of my gear got wet after two days of storm and I felt it was a life threatening situation because the way out of the lake is over a rocky wall which could have been icy due to the storm and therefore treacherous. I felt much panic and struggled to control the panic. Finally when the snow and hail turned to rain I decided to get out on the assumption that if there were ice on the rocks it might melt. The ice had melted but the adrenaline had me breathing as though I had run a mile as fast as I could even before I had begun to walk out. Even without the ice those rocks are rough but I found that the adrenaline enhanced my strength, my balance and my sense of what I needed to do

Once out of danger I spent a miserable cold night in a wet sleeping bag; meeting and sharing a meal and a tent with a hunter brightened the night. That night I had a dream. I was travelling in a bus with friends. The bus was approaching a bridge over a chasm. A bicyclist appeared in front of the bus and the driver lost control in attempting to avoid hitting the bicyclist. So the bus broke through the side rail. As we plunged nose down to certain death I had the following reactions. First I said farewell to everyone on the bus but I was not able to speak loudly enough for anyone to hear. Then I said welcome to eternity. Next I wondered how the impact would feel from contact to blackout. Finally I woke up and wondered whether I was alive.

While in my tent during the storm I made a list of the people I love and Carissa's name was at the top.

Good luck in your endeavor to maintain custody over the children. I think the children need to have a real father and I would question the sanity of any legal system that could see otherwise in this case. I hope your year gets better. My defense against the unkindness of fate is to be good to myself and cultivate my interests. I have found it to be a good defense.

Anil