HALLOWEEN WAS NOT FAR off and I wanted it to be celebrated between the girls and me, so I kept Denise at arm’s length for this. I had costumes to take care of, as well as scheduling trick-or-treating and have candy handed out at the house. The first thing on this list was obviously costumes. As any two young girls would, they had grand ideas of what they wanted to be. When we went to the store, the whole episode and primarily that conversation with Amber telling me that Denise was not part of our family was still dominating my thoughts, so it was hard for me to say no to them. I bought everything.
I’m sure most of that was my way of overcompensating for the bullshit I put them through, and that was just as wrong as putting them through it in the first place, but that’s what I did. Looking back, this is one thing I definitely learned was a mistake in that initial year or so with the kids. Spoiling kids with love is good, but spoiling them with gifts and things never is. No matter what the reason. I set a precedent with them at that point and in many ways, I’m still paying for it.
The girls had a neighborhood kids party to go to the Saturday before Halloween, the same place we have our neighborhood 4th of July shindig. It’s pretty fun, with hayrides, games, and a costume parade. I got them dressed in their costumes and as I was looking at them, I was pretty proud of what I was able to accomplish. I still felt the pang of missing Gina. She was always so good with this stuff, adding in her homemade touches and things like that. The girls looked good, but everything was store bought.
We went to the party and left Denise out of the whole event. The more I thought about ‘the incident,’ the more I thought I should leave her out of it. It was a fun night and to be honest, I felt a lot more like a Dad that night than I did in years past at this event. Even with me bouncing back and forth between the bars and dumping the kids on Nona and all that other stuff, I was so much more involved in the kids’ lives now with Gina gone as opposed to before when she handled everything, and I just enjoyed time with them. Even though it was still fairly recent, being the first Halloween since Gina had passed, nobody really addressed it. A couple of people asked me how I was holding up, but outside of that it was just a night that all of us parents had a good time and focused on our kids. Same went for Halloween a few days later. I took the girls trick-or-treating and as we walked through the neighborhood (well I walked, they sprinted from door to door), and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched them, feeling like I had finally gotten a grip on this single-dad stuff.