The house referred to in the following poem was located at 3224 North Pennsylvania Street and was later moved to 3337 North Pennsylvania. Margaret’s parents, Robert and Margaret Winslow, built the home in 1921. Her mother stayed in the home until the 1970s. Mrs. Fisher’s grandparents, Henry and Grace Hornbrook, lived at 3257 North Pennsylvania Street.
“Passages”
by Margaret W. Fisher
Two thousand-one ~ a new millennium,
and I am eighty years of age.
Revisited this year has been the house
my father built in 1921,
the year that I was born. Its loving
occupants have tenderly restored each room.
The kitchen cabinets of burnished wood are just
the same as those of ’21, yet look
like new. Each window sill and pantry door
and shelf are lovingly preserved.
The dining room where countless family meals
were served retains its simple elegance.
We visited the bedroom and the window
where my Granny knelt with me and taught
me how to pray when father’s plane had crashed.
He was only thirty-three, and I was nine.
We prayed that I would live my life
as he would want me to. And to
this day that is my prayer. My father lives in me
and in that house he built so long ago.
Margaret Fisher, nee Winslow, is an artist, educator, lecturer, published poet, and author. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia and is the widow of Joseph L. Fisher who served in the United States Congress for three terms.
© 2001, Margaret W. Fisher (used with permission of the author)