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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 said in an interview, “Everything good for me. I don’t have any complaints.”

“I never think I would like to see da age ya. Never. Up to day before 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 for is 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. 

Drysdale Stewart said she is happy she does not have any non-communicable disease, such as high blood pressure or sugar (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 everyone. Up and down in everything. I climbed coconut tree. I climbed mango trees. I climbed sweetsop. 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 8 Miles 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 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 amusingly said.  

“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 America, and when him carry mi America, him double marry mi again. Him seh di married 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 proudly said.   

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

When Phillip died, she said it 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, at the tender age of 16 years.

“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 briefly said. 

Her son, Oswald Edwards, was excited that she achieved the milestone of living to be 100 years of age. 

“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 Carter, Angela Landsbery, 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 in the end 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, escoveith fish served with rice and peas and vegetables, which her nephew, Japheth Drysdale, ensured the pots were on the fire.

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

“From mi a baby, she tek mi fi her god son. 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 up, 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,” Japheth said.