Charles Crane/MDN November Sky Reinoehl was Mrs. Incredible/Elastigirl for Halloween in 2024.

I’m sure my family’s unwinding ritual at the end of the day on an evening before a responsibility free morning is similar to most others.

My wife Angie and I are homebodies to begin with, and having two children aged five and two leave us with limited options — not that we’re complaining. The best option which received the most enthusiasm by my step-daughter November was for a “sleepover” on the couch; complete with a marathon of her favorite movies and maybe even stovetop popcorn.

My son Luca, cribbound until recently, typically wasn’t invited, but after he was laid down, November and Angie would arrange their respective nests on our couch, while I prepared snacks and hunted down the TV remote to get the night going.

November would stay up as long as she could, sometimes well past her tired parents, who likely were nodding off and snoring before the opening credits rolled. She took sleepovers seriously. The adults were expected to stay out on the couch or recliner with her all night. I confess, I typically would try to sneak away to a real bed if I woke up in the middle of the night, before having to contend with the ire of a scared and grumpy little girl taking me to task for breaking my promise at one in the morning.

November typically would choose the movie and was a creature of habit. More often than not she’d ask for “The Mummy” (the Brenan Fraser one), Spider-Man (the Tobey Macguire one) or whatever animated film she was preoccupied with at that particular moment. In order to create some variety, we would have to veto certain movies after she asked to watch them for the third day in a row.

That’s how she got exposed to gems like “Peabody and Sherman” (who knew a five-year-old would find George Washington handsome?), “The Twilight Saga” (she found it funny that Jacob never seemed to have a shirt on), and the one and only Star Wars film she liked, “The Revenge of the Sith.”

That last one was funny, because November was utterly uninterested in any of the other Star Wars movies when we were rewatching them, but she was completely enthralled with the final act of Lucas’ prequel saga. In fact, November had begun to internalize the film to such a degree that she could quote Anakin and Obi-Wan’s dialogue during their final saber battle word for word.

I think she was wrapped up in the gravitas of the moment, despite having no awareness or concern for any bit of lore or context before Obi-Wan proved he had claimed, “the high ground.”

She was strangely fascinated by moments in movies where protagonists were brought low, heroes in the grip of moments where all felt lost. From Spider-Man being bloodied by the Green Goblin or Chase being stricken by fear in the “Paw Patrol” movie, she had deep empathy for those characters in their most difficult and dire moments.

Ever since November passed away at the end of September, I haven’t been able to watch any of her movies all the way through. I can handle small doses of things like “Coraline” if I have an excuse to leave the room every ten minutes or so. However, I cannot make it through more than a few scenes of “Across the Spiderverse” without getting physically ill.

She strongly identified with “Ghost Spider” or Spider-Gwen, taking to using our metal chopsticks to bang on the garbage-can like a drumset.

We had just fulfilled her year-long desire to be Ghost Spider for Halloween a couple weeks before we lost her. Her precise request was for a Ghost Spider costume with real webs and real powers, with a real drumset. I would tell her the powers were too tall an order, but that maybe some day she could invent Spidey’s webs and powers for real. November was usually pretty patient, but she’d usually huff because she didn’t want to wait to be everything Spider-Gwen was.

November got to wear the costume exactly once, just to try it on before she hid it away to keep herself from dirtying it. We had to buy a new one for the displays at her funeral because only she knew where it was.

Somewhere in the multiverse, I’m sure there’s a November who got to spend the day on Halloween with her Mommy at Friday Care, slipping into her costume and meeting with her cousin Sophie to fill up her bag with candies and treats and maybe a sticker or tattoo or two.

When we set out without her this year, Luca in his Incredible Hulk costume, I know for a fact, our “amazing friend”, our November, was walking with us.