“Spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you” goes a line from “Stoned at the Nail Salon” by Lorde. I’ve always admired her lyrics, and this line has always stuck with me. It’s a call to action in an otherwise relaxed song, one rooted in the unease we all experience as we worry about spending our time well. There’s also a little memento mori thrown in there, with the word ‘can’ somehow adding urgency to the situation: neither we, nor the people we love the most, will be here forever.

So, how to spend this limited time? I have learned that I need to balance being alone with being surrounded by people. Sometimes I need the challenge of socialising with people who push me out of my comfort zone, but other times I want to be with people around whom I can relax. My family are some of those people. My parents and sister know me better than I know myself, with no pressure to be or act in any particular way around them.

Thirty years have also seen the family dynamic mature into one between four fully grown adults. My sister and I are no longer dependent children or rebellious teenagers; no more are we intent on putting as much distance between our parents and our newly formed personalities. Our rebelliousness has given way to an acceptance that we are much more like our parents than we once thought. We all just get along.

And it’s a good job we do get along, as we all recently assembled in Italy for three days of sightseeing, pizza, and nattering. The majestic streets of Milan were lovely, but they became more of a pretty backdrop for our chats, many of which began in the hotel lobby. Essentially a collection of five chairs around an espresso machine, this tiny coffee area became our personal living room, a space to organise the day and giggle at anecdotes, both old and new.

Of course, we also saw plenty of the city, from the impressive cathedral to the ostentatious shopping arcades. I made a stop at a design museum and talked my parents into visiting a cemetery full of monuments. We managed to squeeze in a trip to Como, where we enjoyed the lake, the ancient alleyways, and a rather chaotic lunch experience. The waiter’s mistakes and the translation mishaps could have left lesser families in a tizz, but we wound up simply giggling at the surreality of it all.

This was my first time in Italy, and it was fabulous. Not because we tried to wring every hour for all it was worth, but because we went around doing whatever we fancied, whenever we fancied. We spent time together and lived new experiences together. Lorde was right. This is what it’s all about.