Of Horses and Teaspoons

by Shaker Roramich

So Liss and I recently bonded over "OMG HORSES!1!!" Turns out she's still a major horse person and I went through that stage as a kid: you know the one. Reading books over and over – Misty of Chinoteague, The Black Stallion, Black Beauty, and any other horse books I could get my hands on – drawing horses, spotting ponies from the car on trips, learning the names of all the breeds, and longing to ride like the wind. I actually did get to ride a horse a few times as a kid, but not very often. If I'd been growing up today, I might have had my interest channeled into those hideous pink and purple "My Little Pony" plastic monstrosities that include a hairbrush (looks nothing like a real curry comb!) to "properly" guide my gender development, but my family didn't have money for stuff like that (one of the few advantages of a working class childhood!). So I was left with books, most of them library books, but also a few of my own.

One in particular stands out – a spectacularly illustrated and wonderfully informative book titled Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry. Henry wrote Misty of Chincoteage and 58 other published books, publishing her first story at the age of eleven. I don't remember what happened to my hardcover copy, but last summer I found a soft cover version in a used bookstore, and bought it for my nearly 5-year old daughter.

The Album of Horses (1951) has entries for 25 major breeds, with factual information woven into a story about each one. My favorites were the pure white Lippizans, because, as I confessed to Liss, they combined "OMG HORSES" with "OMG ballet!!11!!" The breed goes back to 1565 and Emperor Maximilian II of Austria, who established the breed by crossing Spanish mares with Arabian stallions. Lippizan riders and horses go through arduous training over many years, and the performance of horse and rider includes precise and complex patterns of steps, statue-still poses and stunning leaps, all set to music (see, I told you it combined ballet!).

What I didn't remember was that Henry's entry for Lippizan, which describes the training and performing of the horse and rider, is written entirely in "generic" he. I commonly correct written text that is intended to be "generic" when I read to my daughter, as I wage my one-woman war against the tyranny of incorrect and inaccurate language. What I never knew as a child, however, was that at the time Henry was writing her Album, and, indeed, for the 430 years of the school where future riders of this special breed have trained for their amazing performances, no woman had ever been allowed to ride Lippizans.

Although I can't vouch for the fantasy that some enterprising woman might have, at some time over the centuries, ventured into training in male costume (just dreaming, no facts), a couple weeks ago (10/27) the Boston Globe's photo blog, "The Big Picture," published a picture of a woman training in the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, riding a Lippizan.

In a blub moment, I was able to tell my daughter that FINALLY women were allowed to train to dance with the elegant white horses, and when I corrected the text from Henry as I read to her, it wasn't just an abstract ideal about the uses of language, but did, in fact, more accurately reflect the state of the world: Women, maybe even my daughter, can now grow up to ride the Lippizans. Of course, we always COULD, but now the societal barrier to such an accomplishment has finally come down. And I am reminded anew of why I do the work I do, why teaspoons matter so much, every single day in every conceivable domain of human endeavor. Because, however incremental, change does come. And in this case, it only took four centuries.