My 15-year-old daughter and I were sitting on the sidewalk at a restaurant in Rome, having a glass of wine (this is Italy, remember) and having The Talk.

It wasn’t That Talk; it was a talk that had been brewing for months. It seemed everything I said came out as criticism and everything she said sounded snotty. Sometimes, after a bout of sniping, we’d look at each other, desperately sad, and hug. We didn’t know why it was like this.

So here we were, in the almost-matching dresses we’d bought in Florence, nearing the end of our trip and I said “Why do you think it’s like this between us?”

She looked at the ground. Then up at me.

“It feels like you’re always mad at me,” she said.

“It feels like you’re always mad at me,” I responded.

We sat there another minute.

I suddenly had an inspiration: to shift from what was wrong, to what could be right.

“Lilly,” I said, “What do you want? Not just from me. If you could design your life: where we live, what you do for school and fun, how you dress, what would that look like?”

She looked at me tentatively, started gingerly presenting a few ideas. When I didn’t pounce on them she began to expound.

She wanted, she said, to wear skinny jeans. The kind that triggered my rant about denim hosiery and why-would-anyone-wear-something-that-clung-to-them-so-tightly. She wanted to wear the kinds of shoes that set off my tirade about back problems. She wanted to dye her fabulous red hair black. She wanted more freedom to wander about town without bodyguards (big brother or friend to keep her safe from ne’er-do-wells). And she wanted to be free to try on personalities. She wanted to practice being a girly teenager; a moody artiste; a tough girl.

I wanted her to go back to being the Lil I knew. She wanted to be someone new.

It wasn’t that I forbade these things. It was that they cost her too much to do them. I, who thought of myself as a “cool mom,” invariably had some critical comment or at least a loaded silence.

While she talked that night, memories assailed me. When I was her age, I wanted to dye my hair black, too. My faded jeans drove my mother nuts. I stole my father’s ties and dressed like Annie Hall. Through it all my parents loved me, sure. But they made it clear that I was being stupid, or crazy or a “teenager” — a word dripping with disdain. I didn’t want them to feel that way about me; and I didn’t want to see myself like that: a flaky transient version of a person.

I remembered Lilly as a little girl. She was fearless. She sang aloud in restaurants and wore outlandish costumes. It delighted me then. But I had read “Reviving Ophelia” and I feared for her conforming, during teen years, to the strongest member of the herd and I didn’t want that. So, without realizing what I was doing, I tried to make her conform, instead, to my idea of who she really was. An image that was frozen somewhere around age 12.

Suddenly, that night, all I wanted was to be her wingman, Watson to her Sherlock. I didn’t have to like everything she liked (don’t get me started on resurrected ’80s fashion). But I had to be for her; supportive of her search for her own dreams and her own voice.

Shortly after we returned home from Italy, she decided to dye her hair.

“OK,” I said, “I want to give you your freedom. But I know if I draw a line, eventually you are going to need to cross it. So if I let you do this, will you have to prove your independence by doing drugs and getting pregnant and stuff?”

She looked at me in horror: “Moooooom!”

We are the best of friends now. She makes me laugh and tells me truths that I don’t always like to hear, but I need. And I tell her the truth. When she wears certain things I just groan: “Olivia Newton-John,” which, of course, is lost on her. If she has a friend or an attitude I think is dangerous, I tell her what I’m seeing. She can listen to my perspective because she knows our relationship doesn’t hinge on her adopting it. For the most part, she makes her own decisions. And she knows I will be there for her if things go south; if she gets hurt because, it turns out, I was right.

And I will hold her close, and lovingly whisper “Told ya.”

Susan Lahey is a freelance writer living in Austin and mother of three.