GWENDOLYN WARD takes her time settling down at her well-oiled Singer sewing machine, reaches for the handle and slowly begins to turn it with one hand while guiding a test piece of fabric under the needle with the other.
The quiet whirr of the decades-old machine tells you it is in sound working condition. As you observe her confidently and meticulously operating it, you understand the saying “a workman and his tools are not easily separated”.
Gwendolyn is 103 years old, and with that sewing machine she has turned out many a bride.
In her words, “I do nuff wuk on dis machine. I turn out brides enough.”
Born in Ellerton, St George, the centenarian pointed out that though she might have been born in tough times, her life was not as difficult and was mired in simplicity. She grew up helping with household chores, “sweeping de house, bringing water from de standpipe . . . cleaning up fowl dung” in a backyard where livestock were raised to feed the family.
“Life was good for some children and some children had no goodness,” she said quietly, but she took to playing rounders, skipping and pitching marbles in the road for her own recreation.
Sitting in her comfortable Ellerton, St George home, the attentive eyes of grandchildren fixed on her, Gwendolyn said growing up was “all right”.
She attended St Luke’s School and became a self-taught needleworker after leaving. That story is among her treasure chest of a century of life’s experiences, indelibly stored in her memory, a few of which she relates hilariously.
Her sister was the dressmaker and Gwendolyn said: “She learn needlework and I would have to say I ketch some from her because she had work girls. So when she get up on mornings she would cut each man’s work with their name on it and she would go long and leave me; and ups me with a piece of newspaper and I cut and cut until I could cut good.” So good, she managed to build her own clientele and “send out brides” making a livelihood from the craft.
“Can you remember what people used to pay for a bride’s dress in those days,” she was asked.
A long, thoughtful pause followed the question, then a toothy grin and the reply, “Indeed, nuh? . . . I can’t remember if I did get pay.” She soon recalls: “I get pay right enough, with ground food, yams and potato and all such like, but I can’t remember if I get money in my hand.”
There was some reluctance to talk about courtship and it was not difficult to understand why when she did decide to give some insight into the experience. Outright she let it be known, “I didn’t do much courting”.
Pressed for more, she explained: “You know de old time people. If anybody tell yuh deh see, or yuh hear de next body or de nedda body talking, you would hear somebody telling yuh mother, ‘Look, girl keep yuh eye pon dese children, yuh’ – as soon as deh see yuh talking to anybody.”
Since “we did live pon top a hill and evuhbody could look down and see yuh” she was guarded about entertaining any male advances.
Yet she is today the mother of five. How did she manage to sustain a relationship that led to motherhood?
“I can’t tell yuh. A fellow did like me and after it come out the old people say, “Yuh now going in fuh trouble, girl. But nothing didn’t happen. But after, yuh know, yuh would got a friend”.
She is proud of her children, four of whom are married. She raised them “the best way that I could on account of knowing how life would go later on”.
“Yuh never could tell what would happen wid dem or so on, so I keep close and dem do de same thing and get out.”
Gwendolyn was born at the outbreak of World War I; was age 25 at the outbreak of World War II in 1939; has lived through floods, devastating hurricanes and eventful world events that many around her have only read about. Most of them now appear to be just a blur on her memory.
But one event of Barbados’ 1937 riots remains indelibly etched on her mind.
“I stand in the house and I hear somebody say, ‘Come, we got bread enough up top here boy’ and evuhbody running wid deh bag and getting de bread. But I didn’t go. An old lady used to come in at me. She did there laying down pon de floor sleeping and she wake and say, ‘Wait wuh happen’?
“I tell her de people running bout saying that deh robbing de bread van up de Mount Hill. She got up soul and went long up and come back down wid de bread.
“But when she hear de van (police) she fire way de bag. Up to now I don’t know where she pelt de bread. I ask she ‘but wuh gine happen wid you now’?
“She say ‘I ent know. I got some bread, but I ent know’.”
Gwendolyn’s face and petite body convulses in laughter as she goes on to relate this part of the story. “I doan know wuh she do wid de bread nor I dint even remember bout she. I watching de police running and carrying in all dese people down to de jail.
“Dem stop de bread van and tekking out de bread putting it in duh bag. It is dem wun?
“When duh get long down here, de van blow tuh leh yuh know duh carrying dem people long to the jail and she saying ‘wait, sound like duh coming in hey’.”
Composing herself after fits of laughter at the memory of the incident, she remarked: “Dat did a day, hear?”
Gwendolyn celebrated her birthday yesterday with her own family and the church family from Eastlyn Seventh-day Adventist Church where she worshipped up to ten years ago.
She puts her longevity down to “The mercy of God”. Once an Anglican, she switched churches and beliefs after having a dream that led her to the Seventh-day Adventist faith. At a crusade she heard the preacher talking about the “cleansing of the sanctuary”, words revealed in her dream and she was motivated to attend other crusades until she eventually submitted to being baptised an Adventist.
She still loves to eat eddoes from the days when they were given to her in abundance, and still cooks, though “not fuh everybody”.
When she takes on the kitchen it is because she does not want to wait until someone comes home to cook. Her quick meal is often English potatoes because “deh cook quick, you know that”? It is invariably a quick pot with a fast food side such as chicken nuggets, though there are days she attempts a more elaborate dish with rice, vegetables and chicken.
“I don’t like to stand hungry too long.”
Her days are spent mainly watching religious shows on television with a nap in between. Occasionally she has someone set up the sewing machine she has owned for over 70 years, to repair “the lace hem on a petticoat” or “put in a dart” on a dress that is now too big for her figure that grows smaller with age.
She is able to do without her glasses, though she needs a cataract operation on both eyes. The reluctance and fear are because “one ’o dem people dat did live up de hill from me; he went and get he wun cut. He dead de next day, so not me”.
Gwendolyn believes “God keep me here for a purpose”.
