Twin sisters Martha (left) and Mary pose with their mother Gladys McKie. - Carlington WilmotBy Ingrid Brown,
Staff Reporter
SO alike are 63-year-old twin sisters Mary and Martha Gibbs, that whatever happens to one usually happens to the other.
"We both suffer from hypertension. We both have tingling sensations in our fingers," Mary explained. "I got it first then Martha got it later on. We both were involved in two different accidents and I broke my foot and she broke her hand and we both lost our husbands."
Sixty-three years of togetherness has only made the Gibbs sisters closer. Their body language, constant laughter and physical contact, show just how loving they are.
As youngsters growing up in the community of Gibraltar, St. Ann, the sisters said they were inseparable.
Their mother, 86-year-old Gladys McKie, who now lives with Martha on Rosalie Avenue, Kingston, said she and her twin daughters are like sisters. "My gal pickney dem a something else. The little pickney dem so loving and even now them still loving. Me and them grow up like sisters," she said, hugging her daughters.
The twins whose names were changed by marriage to Mary Smith and Martha Thompson, said one reason why they are so close to their mother is that she is a single parent who raised them on her own.
"Even right now we say that we would rather if our mother should go before us so that we will be able to offer support to each other," Mary said. The twins said they wouldn't know how they would deal with it if one of them should die before the other.
Mary, the more vocal of the two sisters, was unsure of who is older but this was soon cleared up by their mother who said Mary was born first. "Is you born first," said Mary. "No is you born first," said Martha before they both started laughing.
McKie said she didn't know she was pregnant with twins until they were born. "Is after me have Mary, the midwife tell me say there is another one," she said while looking proudly at her daughters. "I was so proud of them because in those days they never had no whole heap a twins like now, and so everywhere me go somebody use to beg me one a them," she said.
Although Mary and Martha admit to fighting each other at school as children, their mother said she was unaware of this. "My girls dem never used to fight," she insisted.
Unlike other twins who said they have often played pranks on unsuspecting persons, the sisters said they have always corrected anyone who mistook them for one another.
Apart from Martha's slight limp, the twins are identical. "It's only the limp they could use and tell us apart," Martha says.
"Is she Mary lay down on me foot and squeeze it when we in the womb," Martha argued.
