Gentleman: A Family Memior

Norman Timmins Gates lived a long, happy and loving life. GENTLEMAN presents family stories and some of Norman's poems about those days. The subject of the book, the love that allowed Norman to live ninety-five active, giving years, shines in all of the stories and poems from the first to the last.

One of Norman's stories was about pushing a peanut with his nose.

He said a lot of people lived as if they were pushing a peanut with their nose. They push every day, year after year, never taking their eyes or their efforts off of the peanut. Then one day when they push the peanut, it drops off a cliff, and they go after it.

He said he wanted to raise his head up and look around before he got to the cliff. He didn't want to focus always on pushing the peanut with his nose.

Norman told stories in conversation. If there was a tree in the story, he imagined what the tree was feeling. If there was a cloud, a fish and a tree, he imagined what they were feeling together. He felt the scene.

One evening at dinner, he told about a cherry tree that he had seen on his drive to and from work. The tree was in full bloom, a "gorgeous pink maiden" twenty feet from a four-lane commuter artery. Metal and noise raced by "her dancing pink lace."

"But there she was," he said, "blooming away in all her glory."

When Norman was born in October 1914, daily living was very different from the world of April 2010, when he died. In 1914, we were barely out of the forest. Darkness ruled the night. Winter cold and summer heat controlled our days. Sunlight and starlight matched the inner rhythms in all life. By April 2010, that older world of the forest and the night seemed far away.