SHE is not your average centenarian. Clarice Peylado has not been slowed by age and is in fact still very active.

Peylado celebrated her 100th birthday last Wednesday at her St Thomas home with friends and family.

Though soft-spoken, the centenarian exudes strength as she still commits herself to cooking, tidying the house and exercising.

The mother of four washes clothes, combs her hair, feeds the animals, showers herself, and gets ready on her own.

“She’s still quite active,” her daughter, Jacqueline Shrouder, told the Jamaica Observer.

In fact, this centenarian walks kilometres from her house every Sunday in heels, to and from church.

Her relatives emphasised that her outfit is never complete until she straps on her heels, as she believes that wearing any other footwear would be “inappropriate”.

Her agility has even shocked her doctor.

“When I took her to a doctor the other day, the eye doctor, he said when he looked at her docket and saw that she was 98, him say he was in there relaxing because him say that person not coming in for now, and him say when him look him see her coming he was so surprised,” Denise Minott, her granddaughter and chief caregiver, said.

“Him say this is the lady, walking without stick and him say he was sitting there looking for the person to be slowly coming in,” she continued.

With an affinity for looking fashionable, Peylado always ensures that her clothes are “well put together”.

Clad in her white lace dress and red shoes with red accessories on Wednesday, the ‘birthday girl’ gracefully paraded through her house when the Sunday Observer visited.

“Dressing!” her friend Cordallia Sherrif exclaimed. “She dresses nicely, as you notice today how she’s dressed very nicely in all the young girls’ style.”

“I always say to her granddaughter, Denise, yuh fi tief weh some a Miss Clarice clothes them, you know, because Miss Clarice wear nice things,” Sherrif continued.

Her church sister Heather Bennett attested to her “moderate” attire, but shared jokingly the confidence the centenarian exhibited when she experienced a wardrobe gaffe.

“One Sunday while we were at church, she came in when service started and she was late that Sunday…And when she came in I saw the granddaughter laughing, so I said, ‘what happen Denise?’ Wah happen to Mama, why you a laugh? Denise say ‘look on her foot’.

“You see when me look at the foot a pair of shoes, same type of shoes but different colour, left and right. Wherever me did deh, me get up and me look on her and say Miss Clarice a weh you have on and she say, ‘Don’t you see I have on my shoes?’ and she push out the foot show me — two different colour, but they’re the same style, same heels — one cream and one beige,” Bennett said laughing hysterically.

Bennett also noted that Peylado has a love for handbags.

But outside of her fashion savvy, Peylado has also imparted much wisdom to her generations.

“She always say your pot cover mustn’t turn down, it must turn up,” Minott said. “She say because maybe there is something on the counter and you just take it and put over the pot. She taught us a lot.”

Her daughter-in-law Elaine Shrouder chimed in: “Don’t wring out her clothes before you put it on the line, just put it in the water and spread it because it will crush.”

A stickler for organisation, Peylado is known for her candidness when critiquing the work of her relatives.

Her great granddaughter, Kassonya Minott, told the Sunday Observer of multiple instances when her mama would instruct her to rewash an item of clothing, especially whites, because she “can still see the dirt inna it”.

“Sometime if me no feed the dog and she go around there and see the food, she carry it out,” she noted.

Highlighting her great grandmother’s love for animals, the teenager said the elderly woman would, ignoring all warning to be careful, complete this task, even if she has to climb over a “high board” that blocks the pathway.

“She’s very active and she relies on herself a lot. She go on the back step, five steps down and she go down, and if anything on the line she say that’s not done properly,” her daughter said.

Peylado is also a tremendous cook who, during her youth, would prepare meals for the police officers in the community — a few metres from her home.

“The police them used to beg her to cook, and they always take care of her and she would say I gonna help them out and she cook for them, and the meals go down properly done,” her daughter Jacqueline stated.

“Every Sunday she would make custard for us, you know egg custard and stuff like that, and she would make juices for us too. I can’t forget the egg custard on a Sunday,” she recounted.

Denise, her granddaughter, said the centenarian cannot be fooled when it comes to food, citing that “… if you give her something she will say this don’t have a taste.”

Though soft-spoken and quiet in persona, her son Wesley Shrouder described his mother as a strict woman.

“What I know, enuh, is in the morning before I go school, I had to sweep the yard, carry the water to full up the drum that she could get to use, and then go to school, and when I come back from school in the evening I would go back for the goat if I tie them out in the morning,” he said.

“We always have our duties,” he continued. “She strict on us,but it was good [for] us. We couldn’t like stay out like some children; she would really quarrel with us if we try stay out too late and we have to tell her where we are.”

“She always give all of us duties to do and if we don’t perform it to the best of our ability — one day we had to go to river to wash the plate and I went to the river and I was also rushing to get back to go to church. Those days we had to go to the river and do everything, and when I came back she say the pots weren’t scoured properly, so I had to go back to have it done and have it properly done and ensure I could see my face in it,” Jacqueline said.