In my first year of university, I had a curfew. It wasn’t because I had developed a taste for roof climbing and been sequestered in my room by college to prevent it, or because I was a child genius who came up at a tender age. It was because one night after formal I went to Cindies and then a room party and lost track of time. I crept back into my house at 3 am to find my mother still awake, waiting for me, and furious. I was living at home.

As a child, my family moved every three or four years, often between continents. There were so many transition periods, so many new schools, that my parents and my little brother became the only things in my life that were constant. They were my whole world, my mobile home. One more new town hardly seemed to make a difference to us. My parents offered me a security blanket to cling to as I was tossed into the demanding world of a Cambridge degree. They gave me a cocoon to retreat to, and I was grateful for it. Between lectures, I listened to my friends telling stories of sitting up together all night writing a lab report, gossiping about who was dating whom in their corridor, reminding each other of what happened at the spontaneous staircase party the evening before. I had always been slow to develop close friendships, and I began to realise that my life apart might end up costing me the ‘friends for life’ relationships that university is meant to nurture. Perhaps even more importantly, I knew that it was time to let go of the lifeline my parents had held out for me.

I moved into college in my third year. My parents were understandably upset, as this was a separation between us caused not by necessity, like many of my friends, who had left their home countries to be here, but by my own insistence. I knew my mother would shed a few tears when they left my little bedsit, and I figured they might be a little cold if I tried to bring laundry home every week, but I wasn’t prepared for the sense of betrayal.

There are many things we don’t know about our parents’ lives. Even after more than twenty years of living with them, I still learn things that surprise me. The time my father grew a moustache while my mother was working abroad, the year my mother spent writing a novel while she tried to decide what to do between degrees, the to and fro of cities and jobs of their early married lives that I still can’t describe chronologically. With such an incomplete knowledge of the people we are supposed to love best it can be almost impossible to try to understand the complexities of our relationships. For a long while, I simplified it. They loved me because I was their child, because they remembered my sweet and innocent days, because they were responsible for me. All of these things were still true when I left, so I couldn’t understand why we seemed to be breaking down.

There is an instinct to put your parents on a pedestal, because of the vastly greater life experience they will always have compared to you. However, it is important to understand that their problems and relationships will influence the advice they give you as much as any other person, perhaps more, because your role in these relationships and problems is so acute. I recently brought the idea of my moving back to Canada to find a job to my mother. She seemed shocked that I would even consider it and stated in no uncertain terms that it was a bad idea. I returned to my job search perturbed and began investigating companies closer to home. A week or two later I mentioned the jobs I had applied to in London and was surprised to hear her disparaging the idea of living in such a competitive city. I threw up my hands and resolved to do nothing. A few days later she came back to me and offered her support if I wanted to return to Canada; she knew it was what I wanted, but hadn’t liked the thought of being so far apart.

Both my mother and father lost a parent when they were far too young. This sense of loss and grief has been a part of their lives for a very long time. I understand now that my leaving was a painful reminder, yet another loss, but one that was chosen and therefore incomprehensible. Knowing this helped me to deal with what others see as their over-protective nature, and to repair the bond between us. My parents’ advice has sheltered me from a great many hardships, from disreputable boyfriends to questionable career trajectories, but learning to keep my own counsel has given me the confidence to steer my own course. It is a difficult tightrope to walk, and the only way to do it is with understanding and compassion balanced on each hand. This is the point where we can know our parents best. It’s now that we begin to decide what sort of people and parents we want to be, venturing onto the path of adulthood, while we can still see their footprints.