WHILE she rested on her bed at her Buff Bay home in Portland, Wilhelmina Barker, 103, could be heard counting away. No one knew what or why she was counting.

But these days the centenarian has not been her usual bubbly self, a matter that has been accepted by her 83-year-old daughter Elaine Clarke who has been caring for her.

“She is a 103 years old you know, so I have accepted things as they are,” Clarke said on Thursday.

Born in Dover, St Mary on April 22, 1911 Barker grew up on a farm with her aunt upon the passing of her mother. But while there was much to do on the farm, Barker was content to serve her large family, working at home doing domestic chores.

“She used to take care of her old aunties and we were all living in the same surrounding. We had a big land and so family members did farming. But she never really worked on the farm except to pick things,” Clarke said with a laugh. “Our aunties would help to support the children, so my mother didn’t have to work more than to do housework.”

Despite not having a job outside the home, Barker was able to care for all eight of her children on her own having never been married or lived with a man.

But even as a child, Barker herself never had the privilege of a mother around since she died when she was very young. And so she ensured that her children had the best of her.

“She was always a housewife caring for her children,” Clarke told the Jamaica Observer at their Buff Bay home. “She used to do everything, every little thing you can think of in a home. She used to love washing and ironing.”

Of her eight children, three died some years ago.

Barker had one brother and two sisters. All of whom have predeceased her. She attended the Black Hill Elementary School and is still a member of the Black Hill Baptist Church, only a stone’s throw away. Up to two years ago Barker was still walking to church but stopped when walking became too pressuring on her feet.

Clarke herself only grew with her mom until age 11, before she went to live with an aunt in the same parish. But her memories of her childhood spent with her mom are clear.

“She was a very nice person, but she would beat us when we did something wrong,” Clarke recalled with a laugh. “Sometimes she could not catch me until night. But she used to run me down to catch me but she never used to run far because she said night would come and I would have to come home. And no matter what, she would end up beating me – even if it was in bed. So even if you fast asleep she would put on the licks. And it was the same thing with all of my brothers and sisters,” Clarke said.

One memory in particular stood out in Clarke’s mind.

“I can remember Christmas Eve night I used to sit up because I always love dolly, so I wanted to see when Santa come to tell Santa the type of dolly that I want. So one night now I wake up just in time to see her dropping the things in the stocking foot behind the door,” Clarke laughed. “So from that she couldn’t fool us again, because I tell everybody that is she put them in the stocking.”

And so for the next Christmas instead of putting the toys in stockings, Clarke said that her mother only dropped them behind the door.

But Barker didn’t give up on being Santa Claus and even after her children became adults she turned her focus on trying to convince her younger family members that the chubby white bearded man from the North Pole was indeed the deliverer of gifts.

“Only the younger ones who were there after we left she could fool now. But she couldn’t even fool them much because these last days children they realise things early,” Clarke added.

Clarke said that her mother would help to grow other children in the community and many would be in and out of their house.

“She treated them really good and so our friends and everybody would come by.”

She described her mother as a good cook who mastered the art of cooking rice and peas with chicken and beef.

“Friday night time she used to cook beef soup or liver with rice because her family had a big farm and sometimes they would kill cow on the premises. We used to live on a hill and when you drive down on the level you would see them killing cows down there on Fridays.

While she never sew on a professional level, Barker owned a hand machine and made clothes for her children and other family members, as was customary of women back then. Barker passed on her skill of sewing to her eldest daughter, Clarke.

And while Barker was unable to recount to the Sunday Observer team incidents from her past, her daughter remembered being told by her of Empire Day, which was a grand celebration in her younger days. Before 1961, May 24 was celebrated in Jamaica as Empire Day in honour of the birthday of Queen Victoria. And as its name suggests, the day was used to celebrate the British Empire and England, complete with a flag-raising ceremony and the singing of patriotic songs.

But In 1961, Norman Washington Manley proposed the replacement of Empire Day with Labour Day in commemoration of May 23, 1938, when Alexander Bustamante

led a labour rebellion leading to Jamaica’s independence.

“She used to tell us how when she was attending school and they had Empire Day how she would go out to Hope Bay about two miles away and that is where they would spend all day jumping up, dancing and doing everything,” Clarke said.

Today Barker has lost her hearing which started going bad some 10 years ago.

Though Barker is originally from Black Hill where she has spent her adult years, she has been living with Clarke full time for about 20 years after the death of Clarke’s husband.

“To live to see 103 is a true blessing, because God affords us 70 years so she has gotten 30 over that,” Clarke said.