Cat And Gown Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

I reached 71 years old this morning
And my wife gave me a new dressing gown
While the boys gave me a book about cats
With the latter all being survivors
Of the Christchurch Earthquake
And as I drank my tea in my big green chair
My wife and I discussed spun cotton or terry towelling
And how you couldn’t buy for love or money
The kind of dressing gown that I liked
And the conversation drifted to my mother
On the 9th of June 1944
And how she had not really wanted another child,
In any event with my father, and that
After his death with the RAF in October 1943
She was left to pick up the pieces alone
Except for a 7 year old daughter and a newborn baby
And I explained again that my father’s terry towelling
Dressing gown which had been handed down
To my stepfather, but which he never used,
Hung behind the bathroom door at the farm
And how I used to pick at the cotton
Trying to understand
And I could see my wife bite her bottom lip.