By Judy Sandler
I am ten, too old to be put to bed by my father, but I climb into my bed and wait for him to come upstairs to put me to bed anyway. I have a chin-up bar at the top of my door because I am into strength conditioning at ten years old. I hear his footsteps on the wooden stairwell. I know the difference between the sound of his footsteps and the sound of Mom’s footsteps. Then he pauses at the end of the hallway. I wait. He takes a running start and picks up speed as he approaches my bedroom door, the last one at the end of the hallway on the right. He jumps up to my chin-up bar, grabs hold of it, and swings his body onto my bed. He lands next to me.
“Shhh,” he tells me. “Shhh, we have to be quiet. The caballeros are coming. We have to hide.” He puts the pillow over both of our heads and makes clicking sounds with his mouth that sound like hoofbeats trotting by. Then he says, “You seen ’em? A man and a kid. We’re coming back for ’em.” More trotting sounds until the horse runs off in the distance. We are safe. He removes the pillow from on top of our faces.
“Gilbert!” my mom calls from their bedroom across the hall. “Stop that! She’s too old for that!”
Never too old for that.
Judy Sandler is a writer and educator living in midcoast Maine. She holds an MLA from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from Stonecoast, at the University of Southern Maine. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times’s Tiny Love Stories, the Yale School of Medicine’s The Perch, The Brevity Blog, and more. Her debut memoir, What Kind of Mother, A Reckoning (West Virginia University Press), comes out September 8, 2026. Learn more at www.judysandler.com.
Image by Betty courtesy of Pexels
I love this so much. The clicking of the hooves. The pull up bar. Never too old. So good.
Very touching, sweet story that is beautifully told. I could see the whole episode as it unfolded and brought a smile to my face. Thank you!
Transported! Thank you, Judy for sharing this memory.
Loved this! I had a chin up bar too but my dad never did that. Great forward momentum here and sensory details. And the ending was perfect, “never too old for that.”
Love how you captured a sweet moment. As a playful dad, I can relate.
Oh thank you for this momentary dip into childhood. Never too old for that, indeed.
I could hear the caballeros clomping down that hallway. But even more, I could hear a father’s extraordinary affection for his ten-year-old daughter—the running start, the leap, the pillow over two heads, the whole ridiculous, wonderful ritual of keeping her safe from imaginary horsemen.
And then: “Never too old for that.”
No. We are never too old to remember exactly what it sounded like to be loved.
Judy,
This gem is so rich, the trotting horse, your dad midair, his story, her scolding him—I can hear and see and feel it all. Thank you.
What a sweet, wonderful memory. It sure brought a smile to my face.