INHERITANCE

I got out the car, closed the door behind me. To my left and on the far corner by the newspaper seller who appeared to be shouting at her, was my mother. She waved at me and. I turned my back to her and walked a few steps before stopping turning round to face her where she now stood not far from me and on the same side.
‘Do you want to see me?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said and left.
I felt sad that she’d just done to me what I’d done to her all these years, ‘But I’m the child,’ still running through my mind.
Later we met, had coffee and it was quiet between us until I said, ‘It hurt when you said you didn’t want to see me.’
‘We're very much alike, we are,’ she said. ‘We find it hard to forgive and move out from behind our defences because we know how devastated we can be when outside.’
‘I don’t like being like you,’ I said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s part of your inheritance.’