It’s Not About the Ribbons

They don’t tell you that trophies are hollow.

Trophies, ribbons. Those things that marked that you’d accomplished something as an equestrian. That’s not why I wanted to ride horses. What mattered was the love I had for my pony, the trust I placed in him to carry me to the other side of my first jump. What mattered was the hollow clip, clop of his hooves on the dirt path that led into the forest, where I’d spent an afternoon away from the pressures of school and confusion of growing up as a little girl in the world. When I was with my pony, things made sense.

It’s not about the ribbons, they say. It’s about the journey. It’s about becoming a better equestrian. I’d have told you the same thing, even back then, when I thought the trophy would weigh more in my hands. I’d have told you I was doing it for the sport, to improve myself, and to improve my horse. I was above such petty concerns as the color of ribbon I carried home with me after the show day.

I was twelve years old when I trotted down my first centerline. My coach’s voice echoed in my head: heels down, chin up, plaster a smile on your face, even if your horse trips or startles or won’t move at all. My new breeches were slick against the freshly oiled saddle, and I suddenly felt as if I were riding for the first time, my nerves a brick wall between me and my little grey pony. The planter box labeled with the letter “C” came up quickly, too quickly for me to prepare as much as I should have. When I gave the cue to canter, my heel slipped on my pony’s freshly washed coat, and he kicked out in surprise. Without the aid of friction, I slid right out of that shining clean saddle. Limbs strewn about me in the dirt, my fresh white breeches scuffed and stained, I watched as my pony finished the test without me. But I was tough. I wasn’t one of those bratty girls who cried when things didn’t go her way. I caught my errant pony, and got back on.

They don’t tell you that the sand inside that little white picket fence isn’t all that soft, either.

Needless to say, I did not win a trophy at that show, or for a long time after. But I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve become a proper horsewoman, with achievements well-earned. You just have to keep at it, they said. And so I did.

I fell in love with horses the first time I felt a velvet-soft muzzle on my shoulder. Or maybe it was the first time I lost all sense of time and purpose staring into a horse’s eyes, those deep brown pools of eternity. I dreamed of cantering a tall black horse through a meadow of wildflowers, wind tangling my long hair, the beating heart of freedom in both of our chests. When I finally convinced my parents to let me lease that little grey pony, I didn’t think I could find deeper happiness. In hindsight, maybe I was right.

Because a few months after I brought that pony home, I learned about something that promised even greater happiness: a bright blue ribbon, earned by winning a class at a show. I’d hang it tastefully above my bed, just below the shelf of my Breyer model horses. It would prove the horsemanship I’d been practicing. I didn’t need an entire wall of ribbons. Just the one blue one to decorate my room.

But it wasn’t blue, that first ribbon I won. I’d placed fourth, which meant it was a white ribbon I picked up from the little plastic tent in front of the sand arena where I’d ridden my pony. And white just wouldn’t look right above my bed, not in the way I’d imagined it.

I practiced every day after school, spent every weekend at the barn, brushing and clipping and mucking and posting the trot. I became as much of a fixture there as the iron grates that kept my pony in his stall, away from the muddy fields that would soil his coat before the weekend’s show. But the blue ribbon didn’t come.

My riding, though, improved, and as the years went by, I outgrew my little pony. I rode a larger horse now, one that my trainer told me would place better at the shows. There was some hierarchy of horse breeding, I came to understand, that seemed to value German-bred horses much like my father valued his German-made automobiles. So with my improved skills, and my Holsteiner, my blue ribbon seemed assured. I had a new coach by then, one who strapped metal spurs to my boots and told me I needed to ask him to step more energetically.

I didn’t like the way my lovely new chestnut friend pinned his ears when I touched him with my spurs the first time. So I didn’t do it again. I didn’t want to hurt him. But when I failed to create the movement my coach wanted to see, I was asked to dismount so she could show me how it was done.

“He’s testing you,” she said. “You have to be a leader.”

When I put my horse away that day, his skin was raw where she’d used the spurs.

It was for my horse, then, when I used my spurs the next time. Because I’d just use them once, twice, just enough so that my trainer wouldn’t ride him instead. My beautiful friend might pin his ears from time to time, but his skin would heal. And I could live with that. That’s what I told myself.

Day after day, I worked to create the perfect outline my coach wanted to see. I closed my fists on the reins while I tapped my spurs against my horse’s side, and his head dropped. Submission, it was called, and there was a score for it on the test sheet. It wasn’t the image I dreamed of when I was a little girl, when I imagined cantering through a field of wildflowers, but it was what the judges wanted to see. This was real horsemanship, something bigger than my childish daydreams.

But my horse wasn’t the only one expected to look a certain way when we entered the arena. I was expected to cut an elegant figure in the saddle. There was a score for that too. I didn’t have the long legs and thin frame that made the other girls look so pretty in the saddle. So I pulled my stomach in until I could barely draw breath. I’d only have to do it until I’d trimmed all the fat. I’d work on it out of the saddle, counting calories as strictly as I counted canter strides. My horse was working hard for me, and it was only fair I did the same. I could barely concentrate in school because I was so hungry, but it would be worth it when I lost the weight. Soon, I needed a new show jacket. My old one was three sizes too big by the time we finished winter training. My mother’s brows furrowed as she swiped her credit card at the tack store.

“You’d better not gain the weight back,” she said. “We need to sell your old jacket to pay for the new one.”

But for all the work I put in, I still couldn’t get my horse to move to my coach’s satisfaction. And so one day, she rose from the fabric folding chair at the edge of the arena and picked up a whip with a long lash. My mount tensed, but he flexed his joints, moving energetically forward, upward, sideways. Being chased, apparently, was the only way he’d move enthusiastically enough to get that score we were seeking. A “7”—it meant “fairly good”. Excellence was still so far away, but perhaps the whip would get us there.

The arena whirled around me as, again and again, we completed a circuit at a trot, then a canter, faster and faster, until I no longer controlled my horse’s feet, until I no longer controlled my own movement. Soon, we were both lathered in sweat. If I was a better rider, would my horse need to endure this?

And thus I found more fat to trim. It’s not about the ribbons, they say. And it’s true. It’s about getting it right.

Soon, I was applying for colleges, and my school advisor told me to make sure to put my awards and achievements in the saddle on my applications. Thousands of dollars, countless hours that could have been spent on advanced placement classes spent at the barn instead… but that investment could pay off in the form of scholarships and college acceptances. I was barely satisfactory in the eyes of judges, but apparently, I’d still accomplished a lot for my age.

The next time I entered that dressage arena, I didn’t fall. All six legs we kept inside that little white picket fence. Somehow, I’d managed to convince my horse to put one hoof in front of the other until the test was done, to stay in the narrow lane I permitted between the spurs on my boots and the metal bit in his mouth. I was very determined, they said, to have accomplished what I did. But it didn’t feel like determination when I was in the arena. It felt like fear of falling from a high beam if I misstepped, a delicate dance at the edge of perfection, the consequences of failing catastrophic. Maybe there wasn’t a difference. Maybe it didn’t matter.

Whatever it was, it earned me the score I’d been working towards—just barely considered satisfactory, but it was achieved at a difficult enough competition that it was considered a significant accomplishment. And with it came the college acceptance of my dreams.

My horse was sold. My accomplishments raised his value, enough that his sale funded my college tuition. And with that, I turned my focus to other scores, a different piece of paper than a dressage test sheet, this time a degree.

I did end up winning a trophy after all, along with several blue ribbons. They didn’t matter to me as much by then. There was still so much to improve, such a vast chasm between me and perfection, that I didn’t pin them up in my room as I’d once dreamed. I didn’t feel like I deserved them. But the trophy was too big to hide, and so there it sat on my bedside table, too big for the space, but too heavy to move.

Heavy, though not with physical weight. Because the trophy was hollow. It was my guilt that weighed it down.

A trophy is meaningless to a horse, an equal partner in the pursuit who has no say in pursuing it. My horse loved me, trusted me. And I repaid his unquestioning devotion by letting someone chase him around the arena until the whites showed in his eyes, until his nostrils flared and his breathing came ragged. Those days, my rides little resembled the easy hacks through the forest I’d once dreamed of. I’d long forgotten that dream in favor of a new one: the dream of perfection.

I returned the trophy. You only get to keep it for a year before it is sent to the next victor, or victim. I was glad to be rid of it.

Years passed, and I found more scores to chase, more degrees to earn. The whip still chased me, but at least there was no unwilling animal as collateral this time. I didn’t have space to display the ribbons in my tiny city apartment. So I boxed up the ribbons again, the binder of dressage tests with the judges’ marks, once so carefully sorted and studied. My medals, earned with blood and sweat and tears, collected dust at the bottom of a decaying cardboard box.

It was a picture, not a ribbon, that truly brought me back to that time years later. My horse had a new owner, one who’d sent me a letter updating me on his progress. He looked happy, relaxed, as they hacked together under the sun, outside that white picket fence where only perfection was allowed. But when he’d been mine, there had been so much more than what happened inside that fence. I wanted to pet him again, groom him, walk with him. Try things over again. This time, I’d throw the whip away, find another way. It was my heart, too, that was torn bloody by those sharp rowel spurs. They were legal to use in competition, so why did it hurt so much?

I unboxed the ribbons. I had space now to display them, if I liked, in the big house I’d earned with my fancy degree. I held one of the ribbons in my hand. First Place, it proclaimed in glossy gold text. It wasn’t heavy. It was empty, weightless, meaningless. A cheap piece of fabric, earned through my horse’s suffering. The blue color was garish. I preferred the white one that I’d shoved to the bottom of the box, the one that had once been my shame.

And so I took the tail hair instead, saved from when I said goodbye. I printed the photo of my horse in pasture, the only one I took without that polished crank noseband wrapped around his lovely face like a vise. I took his halter, his favorite brush. It was those I displayed atop my stylish new coffee table. It was those memories I cherished.

I threw away the ribbons. They never mattered anyways.