Songfacts®:

• This song examines the emotional toll of war from two standpoints, with Queensrÿche frontman Geoff Tate vocalizing from the soldier's point of view and his own 10-year-old daughter Emily singing from the perspective of the child waiting for him back at home. Tate explained on Anybody Listening: "There is a lot of emotion attached to this song. The whole idea of separation between loved ones is one of my favorite topics, perhaps because I live and breathe it being away from my kids and my wife while touring. You miss them so much, and it's like you live two separate lives. When you're a soldier and you're away, it's very difficult to bridge those two worlds.
  
  This song is inspired by a series of letters. The correspondence was between a soldier/father and his young daughter back at home. He was laughing about how he thought it was really cute to him that in the letters, they were both saying the same things and even using the same terminology. Those kinds of coincidences really get to me. Because it was a father-daughter relationship, I asked my daughter Emily, who is ten years old, to sing the song with me. She did a wonderful performance, so innocent. I'd never shared a lead vocal with one of my kids before and emotionally; it was one of the toughest songs for me to sing on the record."
  
  Both the father and the daughter reference the father coming home to "sing songs and dance." This suggests that Tate at least partially based the character on himself.