Yes, about the family situation...When I researched on Sadies family I was surprised by 2 things. She apparently had a 6 year older brother, Walter, and she had a living mother, Mary, married to her father Henry.
I still have no memories of an older brother (or just perhaps, I will explain further down) and I definitely don't have any memories of her mother, at least not the mother that I think Mary looked like, being age 45 when Sadie was born, white, from England.
The only thing I can think could perhaps have been a memory happened over 20 years ago when a then friend of mine tried meditation on me. I began describing the looks of a young man who at the scene was responsible for me it seemed. He was kind to me, but he was suspicious to where I had been. I was cut in two about telling him. I had the feeling that the parents were sick or away, but that someone was resting, but was not to be disturbed. What I described then was the surrounding and the looks of clothes and haircut to have been around the 1910's or so. He was tall, I remember that, but the rest has become a mist. We at the time looked at it as a failed meditation. And my friend wondered why I had to become so emotional as tears began to dwell down my cheeks during this scene. He felt like he could have been an older brother, not a father -- too old for that. I remembered she had to force me out of this scene, where to her nothing happened anyhow except the 2 of us talking. Perhaps after all it was not a failure as we thought. Perhaps this was Walter ? Walter was tall, had black hair and gray eyes, according to his military record. He died during battle, in WW1, 1918. Their mother, Mary, received the tragic news. He was too strangely 26 just like Sadie was when he died. He was not married. Had no children.
When my daughter described the looks of Sadie's dead body, she also said that the first time she saw her Sadie was 14. Because William was older the thought I have now is that perhaps he knew her older brother, that they were friends, somehow. And this was why he smiled at her the way he did in the library, recognizing her ?
When William was 16 he was jailed and at first sentenced to The Mills for 4 (!) years after a crime that I can't even read what it was he did, except that he had bruises and scar and bite mark on his face,body, when they took him in. He was released much sooner, he spent only about 1 year there, and returning to live with his family.
It was as if he never looked back, he did not repeat any more criminal records but always had a job and seemed to have been "walking the line".
I have a loose theory that the reason why Sadie lacks the documents her brother had, she even lacks a birthday, and is first "seen" in any type of record at age 5, then together with her uncle Frank living with them (unemployed), is because she simply was not born there in Phila like they claimed later on she was. That she came there with Frank. Frank later moved out. I could see he lived close by with many others in a form of...well, I don't know what it was. Then when I looked again he had moved out of there too. I have lost track of him in my research.
In my memories of Papa when she was little he could run. He was tall and slim and would lift her. He had a type of "long" head. He had dark hair. I don't know if this was Frank or Franks 2 year younger brother Henry. Henry was the father in the articles and the one living in the house she was seen in records being brought up in (from age 5 ?). I wonder if Frank and Henry looked alike. If Henry was the one who had his leg hurt ( polio ?) and using a stick, or if that was Frank.
About her mother Mary she was suppose to according to some records to also live with them, but when I checked another record she lived somewhere else.
William put question marks on the info they wanted him to give on Sadie's death certificate, but filled in info on her father.
When Henry died his (estranged ?) wife was not the one giving info about him on relative side of the death certificate (beside the doctors). Instead it was another Mrs.
The boy Frank is also to me a mystery.
I think I caught a glimpse of him way before knowing of his existence but as it was one of the scenes where Sadie was sitting down looking out on the sea, and being aware of a small boy playing to her left side, to himself, she was not interacting with him at the time. I remember thinking (this happened I think during meditation) that I had accidentally floated over to another past life, the one most recent to me, as I would do that then too, sitting on the beach with my child playing there, but still I kept feeling as if I was Sadie. I remember her desire to want Williams child or children, and her missing him and being worried. I assumed this was when he was away during WW1. I remember also thinking this was party imagination, that her desire to give William a child was so great that she had now imagined or I had imagined actually seeing one, so I never wrote about it, because I felt foolish about it.
The boy Frank was said to be born in 1913, but his "parents" Sadie and William were married in 1915... There are no records of Sadie actually being the mother of Frank except the record of someone collecting info of the family members living at a certain address. Then it was claimed his name was Frank Conlen, but in any other documents of him he was Frank Wells, so I think perhaps he was never a Conlen. He went to school. When William past away in 1931 his second wife claimed he had no children. Still the boy Frank existed and after Sadie's death and William's remarriage he lived with Sadie's father and after Sadie's father had passed he lived with Sadie's mother Mary, on different address.
New Orleans still has popped up to me when Sadie was adult. I have a scene where they thought it was colder than it was, she and William, and he is behind her, carrying a kind of gray/light brownish made of hardwood paper or something of a suitcase. A colored lady with a fan opens the front door. Then Sadie is playful and happy, and they hug and the lady greets William, like she has been expecting them, and invites them in. When she walked what I suspect is New Orleans streets with William in the evening she is free and happy and they show physical tenderness towards another. She does not go looking down on the pavement, like I could see her do automatically in Phila.
I have always took for granted that William and Sadie went to school together, but then I don't understand these 2 scenes. She reads in the library. He sits opposite in a slouch kind of way. His head resting on the table. He breathes out a sigh. He does not study. Another is that I think she would sit on the back of his bicycle. They would park it and go to a big tree. She would sit on one side of this tree and study. He would sit on the opposite side of the tree, as if they were not to disturb one another, but when she came around to look he had slouched down, had his cap over his face and was sleeping. No book in sight. Then I could see them leaving the tree, and when they did she sneaked in a gift for him in his pocket. I could also see him sit cross legged opposite her while asking questions to her, school related, by this tree I could tell she did not think she was too bright herself and really thought she had to study extra hard in order for her "slow brain" to finally get it. I could tell she thought William was naturally more gifted than she was. I could also tell she did not want William to think she was slow, so she would be easily smiling to him and trying hard to remember the right answers. The only activities I see him up to is sport and wanting to go to prom. He never reads anything. I don't know what is up with him. It is like he is on the side of everything.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge about the high school. The little I remember from this is that the mothers were somehow involved in this, I could see them stand there where the rehearsal would be.
There is this one scene I have never understood if it was real or wish believe or what. It seems much real. But I can't figure it out. It starts with William standing on a scene built right out in the open with audience ahead of him, all kinds of people, I think, Sadie did not take a good look in the scene, and it is autumn like. So he stands there and speak in some strange looking (to me) microphone. So he would do that and do his thing with him reaching out his hand back so she will take it, look behind at her, and smile at her, wanting her to too come forward. She has stood in line with few others in the background. I could tell she did come forward, but kept her eye on him, looking at him from the side, wanting direction. He lifts his hands up in the air, give a big smile. Then it goes away. I think I could see water, like river like, on the right where the grass ended, further away, but that is it. I had seen, if it was now built there, this area before, where some type of sport would be at, and there would be an audience there too. Could just have been imagination, or day dreaming, but the wooden floor she stood on seemed so real, she could hear it creak. One could go up the steps on each side. I remember he had a (strange) nick name for her, "Miss Apple-pie".
Thank you so much Sea & Sky if you read all this
/Jaimie
)
