Words: Sally DeFord
Music: Sally DeFord and James Loynes

Here's a rarity for this website: a love song. This one has a short story behind it that taught me a much-needed lesson. It begins like every good story should: Once upon a time...

...there was a beautiful young woman in high-school. One night she came home from a date to find her dad and I playing Scrabble (yep... we're exciting like that). I watched her walk in; I watched her as she foraged for a snack in the fridge; I watched her and watched her and I thought to myself, "She is just sooo beautiful and graceful and amazing and..."

And I said... *nothing.*

The next day is when I realized I had something to learn. She assures me she didn't do it, but when I sat down at my computer, her online journal was open in my browser screen. Being the considerate mother that I am, I started reading. (Hey, if it's on my screen, it's fair game.) This was her take on what I was thinking:

"Tonight when I came home, my mother just stared at me like I was some sort of freak..." And it went on from there.

Needless to say, I was appalled. The contrast between what I was thinking and what she thought I was thinking couldn't have been greater, and it was my own stupid fault for not just putting it in words.

Lesson learned: when you leave the good things you think unspoken, the silence tells big, fat lies--especially to our young people who are constantly bombarded with negative messages throughout their already-insecure teenage lives. When we see the good in others, we need to tell them, right out loud, in words. Our kids... our spouses... our parents... not one of them is a mind reader.

So this is a love song for my daughter. Maybe it's a love song for yours... or your spouse.. or your parents. Maybe it's one we should sing every day of our lives, because when it comes to telling our loved-ones about the beautiful things we see in them, there's no such thing as "once too often."