Dr. Joy,

I expect this is going to land on your desk in due course in any case,
so I'm taking care of my portion of it now. When Ann later comes to you
and asks you to prevail upon me to break our agreement, you will have
my reasons for declining in advance.

Take note that I have no intention of replying to the attached fax in
any way at all. Donn Kessler has convinced Ann to throw away another
$10,000 on fruitless legal filings, so the threat to Cameron (and by
concatenation to you and to Judge Dairman) is not over. Moreover, Ann
continues to edit mail from me using elipses to seemingly connect
sentences separated by paragraphs of intervening matter, just as she
did with you late last year. As absurd as Ann's filings are at this
late date, I cannot risk giving her even more fabricated ammunition to
use against Cameron.

With that as preface, these are my reasons for declining this request:

1. I will not participate in the brutalization of Meredith. Ann and
Steve clearly have the legal right to present Meredith to a stranger
and to claim that that stranger--from whom Meredith's very existence
was kept secret for seven years--is Meredith's "grandmother". I
surmise, also, that a hidden motive beind this trip is to present
Meredith to Amelia, which has been explicitly prohibited by Amelia's
guardian ad litem. In any case, I do not have to participate in either
of these atrocities, nor should anyone expect me to participate.

2. I will neither ask nor permit my father and his wife to subsidize
these atrocities. They have been good enough to provide the airline
tickets for the children and I to see one of their _real_ grandparents.
There can be no basis in justice for asking or demanding that they
absorb part of the expense of acting to Meredith's injury.

3. I will not voluntarily give up any of the visitation time we have
agreed to. The affected dates, 12/19--12/22, fall within time when
Meredith is scheduled to be with me. The transition for that visit is
12/23. As a matter of self-protection, I cannot fail to stick to the
letter of our agreement. Ann has consistently violated the spirit of
the agreement (for example, Meredith will touch down here today one
hour before her bed-time) and she has consistently sought to persuade
me to violate the letter by extending her time with Cameron, and, as
here, abbreviating my time with Meredith. I will permit neither, but as
a matter of justice, I will in turn _seek_ neither.

4. I will not split up the children in the middle of a visit. I can't
think of a better wedge to drive between them than to have them fly at
the same time to different destinations. Similarly, I loathe the idea
of Meredith flying alone into an unknown city with only the completely
unreliable Steve Wright to rely upon. Sooner or later I know I'm going
to be sending Meredith alone to Seattle, depending on Ann to be on time
when I know she is always late. I hate every bit of this, but I will
not send Meredith alone into a city where she has absolutely no
connections.

(Amusingly, no proposal has been made for Meredith to see Ann's sister
while in Boston. Julie and Meredith have had an actual relationship
going back to Meredith's birth and before, but the children have no
"right" to see relatives with whom they have had psychological and not
merely biological relationships.)

5. The rationale for flying both children to Seattle on 12/23 was to
permit them to have Christmas together there. If Meredith flies to
Boston, this goal will be frustrated.

6. The rationale for our electing to fly to Phoenix on 12/22 instead of
Seattle on 12/23 was to permit us to have a Christmas together here
before the children go away for almost two weeks. If Meredith flies to
Boston, this goal will be frustrated.

Unfortunately, Ann and Steve have the power to rob Meredith of every
shred of her true history--on their on time and at their own expense.
They do not have the power to do this on my time and at my father's
expense, and it is beyond absurd to expect me to facillitate this
hideous procedure.


As a matter of reference, I wanted to cite a couple of other matters,

First, and trivially, the history beind the dental fax, also attached,
is this: In my last visit, Meredith told me that her teeth had become
stained when she and Wright had gone on a weekend trip to a jazz
festival. She said they had drunk a lot of Dr. Pepper and refrained
from brusing their teeth. I found the fax amusing on a couple of
grounds. 1. The attempt to spread blame even though Meredith drinks
nothing but (gallons of) milk in my house; by the time this shows up in
another fanciful Kessler filing, the stains will be my fault, not
Wright's. And 2. The pellucid demonstration that Wright is abysmal as a
parent and not even adequate as a baby-sitter.

Second, and much more seriously, I have the strong impression that
Meredith's emotional life is under constant supervision. In the last
visit (me in Seattle, 9/19--9/22) it took Meredith a full day to come
around and behave as her normal self. Before then she was distressingly
quiet--mumbling, folded in on herself, excruciatingly self-effacing,
the polar opposite of her normal state of divine willfulness. I don't
have the impression that either of the children grow in that house;
certainly there is no evidence in the way of new knowledge or
capabilities. Tragically, Meredith is spending 75% of her time there,
which leaves her not a lot of time to become a bigger and better kid.
But the disturbing thing is, she seems to me to be becoming _less_
independent, not more. The trouble with a Family Lie is that you either
tell it or you're disowned. I think Meredith is disowning her ego
instead. I know you can't do anything about this, but I'm pointing it
out as something to watch for.

Greg Swann
10/4/96