Forever 15

If you asked Alice Drysdale Stewart, who achieved the milestone of 100 years on February 19, how she is feeling, her first utterance would cheerfully be, “I feel good as a 15-year-old!”

On February 21, during the weekend celebration of her birthday at The Little Copa in Bull Bay, St Andrew, the centenarian joyfully told The Gleaner in an interview, “Everything good for me. I don’t have no complaint.

“I never think I would like to see da age ya. Never. Up to today efore yesterday, I was in my bathroom bathing and I said it to myself, ‘But how you live to be so old and none a di other Drysdale dem never reach da age ya?’” Drysdale Stewart said.

One thing Drysdale Stewart is extremely grateful about is that she still has her full independence at 100 years of age.

“It is good. I can do everything for myself. I cook for myself. I eat everything. Every food a my favourite: dumpling, banana and Renta yam. The only meat I don’t eat is lamb, because I don’t like how dem kill dem. I watch dem kill the lamb and that just changed me. But goat, pig, cow, fresh fish [and] sprat. Dem is my meat. I don’t even know the secret to me living this long, more than I am happy. When my son took me to the doctor recently, the doctor said him don’t see nothing in my body fi tell him that it will mek mi dead anytime [soon],” she happily said.

‘I was like a boy’

Drysdale Stewart said she is happy she does not have any non-communicable disease, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, and she is still active.

“From I was 16, I was like a young boy. I was a girl, but I was like a boy. I was living in Turners Gap, where we have every fruit tree, and I climbed every one. Up and down in everything. I climbed coconut tree. I climbed mango trees. I climbed sweetsop [tree]. My country and my property is a fruit place. Right now, where I live I have pear, I have ackee, and I go out there and pick what I want,” the elderly woman, who now lives in Eight Miles, St Andrew, said.

“When I moved to Kingston, I was just like any other people. Lively, happy, do everything. All the work I used to do is house work, domestic. From country to Kingston. I used to sell fruits [as well], every fruits you can think ‘bout. I used to go down the factory and buy the apples and come and walk and sell,” she said.

She recalled being asked by Phillip Moodie Stewart to marry him, while she was a vendor at Parade in downtown Kingston. Although hesitant at first, she did, and eventually moved to the United States (US) with him in 1974.

“Mi live in Kingston before mi find a man and him marry mi, tek mi weh. If not, I would have stayed in Kingston,” Drysdale Stewart said in amusement.

“Him seh ‘Every day I pass I see you here selling. I love you. I going marry to you’; and you know, I cuss a bad word. He go weh and him come back and him seh, ‘You think I’m joking. I waa know where you mother live mek I go tell her I waa marry to you’, and just like that. And him come back, and him carry mi [to] America, and when him carry mi [to] America, him double marry mi again. Him seh di married (wedding) a Jamaica is no wedding,” she said.

She added that although he was not her true love, she grew into loving him “because he was the kindest man on Earth” to her.

“I had no problem with married life. Every day I sorry my husband dead, because if him never dead, I wouldn’t be in Jamaica. I would be going and coming. It was a good life. I had no complaints. Marriage was good for me,” she said proudly.

She added that when he took her to the US, the new experience felt like she had given a life to a baby and started anew.

Shattering experience

She said, however, that Phillip’s death was not the most shattering time of her life. The most shattering time for her was when she lost one of her two sons, Errol Hamilton, when he was just 16.

“When I lost my son, I didn’t think that I would have been sitting here, the way how I missed him and bawled; but now that I’ve reached 100 years, I feel like I am 15,” she said.

According to another of her sons, Oswald Edwards, he was excited to see her achieve the milestone of becoming a centenarian.

“On the Wednesday night, the night before her birthday on the 19th, I was so, not apprehensive, but wanted to see the Thursday come, because I’ve seen people die so close to their birthday. Even men like President [Jimmy ] Carter, Angela Lansbury, they reached so close to the 100, and didn’t make it, and I was saying, I hope she makes it,” Edwards said.

He added: “When I woke Thursday morning and I knocked on her door and heard her voice, I was happy. She made it. This 100 is a milestone not many people live to see. I am very, very happy.”

When asked what she was most thankful for, she said, “Life, and how I can live and don’t have a problem.”

The celebration for Drysdale Stewart would not have been complete without traditional Jamaican food, such as mannish water, curried goat, fried chicken, escoveitch fish served with rice and peas and vegetables, which her nephew, Japheth Drysdale, ensured was in the pots on the fire.

He said he vividly recalled the kindness of the centenarian over the decades.

“From mi a baby, she tek mi fi her godson. And a di only person me know who go America and every Christmas she come back and come look fi we. When she come, she a bring we remote car, the ones you wind [to the tune of] Mary Had a Little Lamb, and she always come look fi we. And since she retire and come home, a me and her. Dem seh, ‘Once a man, twice a child’, she a di child now, and me tek her as mi little baby and a tek care of her,” Drysdale told The Gleaner.

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