In November 2000, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin I met my twenty-seven year old daughter for the second time.
     I was twenty-two when she was born on a cold February day in Bedford General Hospital in England. Her mother and I had parted ways without knowing about her pregnancy and were now together only to see the birth and adoption process completed. Then the breakup, which had occurred many months before, would go back into effect and it would all be over. In theory, anyway.
     I hadn't wanted the adoption. I had argued against it. I had cried about it. I thought of my child growing up with people who were not like her, people whose values would not be mine, people who would, with the kindest intentions, stunt her soul. And I thought about never meeting her, about someday dying without ever knowing who she was. I wondered, especially on her birthdays, where she was, what was she like and was she happy?
     Over the years I tried to find her. I put my name on the English register of biological parents and on the American Soundex register because I knew that her new "Dad" was a major in the American Air Force, stationed in England. And I knew that her name was Tara. There's not much you can do with just a first name and a birth date but I tried. I spoke to Detective Hotline and wrote to the Air Force. I used an Internet locator service. A woman in Dublin did some research in England for me. Nothing.
     Then on August 16th, 2000 the phone rang. I had just gotten home from Lake City where Colcannon had performed. I was packing CDs for a trip the next day to perform in Albuquerque. "Hello," I said. "Hello," said a voice, pausing, "my name is Tara." "Yes," I said, "and you're my daughter." I can't believe now how calm I was. I got her last name as fast as I could in case.... just in case. I was afraid somehow that without that one, added, piece of information nothing would change. A last name would make it real. If the line went dead, or if she changed her mind or if I woke from the moment and found it all to have been some strange dream then I would still remember that name and have something. And we talked for hours. It was easy. We liked each other and chatted like old friends. And when it was over and we were saying goodbye I said, "I love you," and she said, "I love you." Easily. Naturally.
     After that we spoke often. She told me that her parents had explained to her, when she was old enough to understand, that she was adopted. They told her, too, that I had wanted to keep her. I am hugely grateful to them for that. And she told me about how she had always felt different and how she had kept a little suitcase under her bed, packed and ready for when I came to get her.
     When she went looking for me she placed her name, and the names on her birth certificate, in various databases on the Internet. Her English aunt found one of those listings -- and so the first reunion was with her birth mother. Then it took several months to find me. No one was looking for a musician or looking in the United States but eventually the Web trawled me to the surface.
     Three months after that first call we met face to face. I was with my wife and my band mates, who were excited and with cameras at the ready. After all the conversations that followed that one in August, after all the catching-up and the careful probing of each other's lives and opinions, we met. In the lobby of the Holiday Inn-Downtown in Eau Claire Wisconsin.
     Photographs will later show our initial shyness and awkwardness and then -- two days later, in a parting photo -- a shared, sad, unwillingness to part.

Originally published in The Denver Post, March 31, 2002.