Van Ree's Voice

I’ve never truly celebrated Valentine’s Day before.

My mother would always get my brother and I some treats on the holiday but it was never a big event in my household. When I was younger and inquired as to why we rarely even gave the holiday recognition my father replied, “It’s a stupid holiday. If you love someone you should tell them everyday, not just once a year.”

Even at a young age I understood this and thought that it was a good reason to boycott the holiday myself. My father also explained that kids my age had no idea what “love” meant, except a family-type love.

My mother didn’t want her children to feel left out however, so continued to buy us candies and stuffed animals.

Though we didn’t celebrate the national day of “love,” we did however make our own holiday.

My mother created the newfound holiday on Feb. 14 by accident. One thing that my father loves almost as much as his wife and children is cheesecake. So my mother year after year would prepare cheesecake for him on Valentine’s Day as her gift to him, even though he found the day to be a bit of hogwash.

After many consecutive years of cake making went by my brother and I had caught on to the pattern.

So I once again questioned, as children always do, why my mother always made the delicious cake on Valentine’s Day.

She said, “Because your father loves cheesecake and I love him.” Simple enough, I thought.

My father piped in from the kitchen, dipping his finger into the fresh mixture, “Because it’s not Valentine’s Day. It’s Cheesecake Day.”

My mind moved from the balloons, chocolates, and candy and thought it was wonderful idea – a full day devoted to cheesecake.

Soon Feb. 14 became known in our family as Cheesecake Day. My mother started making multiple cheesecakes for all of us to share and my brother and I would rush home to help her add the eggs, cream cheese and sugar to the mouth-watering family delicacy.

We started to decorate them in reds and pinks to go with the nationally celebrated holiday. My father noticed, but after all it was cheesecake so he didn’t mind what it looked like.

Whether or not the true reason my father didn’t want to celebrate Valentine’s Day was because he never wanted my brother or myself to feel the disappointment of not having a Valentine, I’ll never know.

It was once we had started the cheesecake tradition that I started to look around at school on Valentine’s Day. Girls would get flowers, candy, balloons and cards in class and would blush while taking the gifts and thanking the deliverer quietly. The cards would read things like, “I love you,” or “Be mine forever” – things that in high school made me gag. It made me realize how young we were. Every boyfriend, girlfriend, fling and crush was telling their significant other that they loved them.

It was then that it hit me. My father was more right than I had ever thought possible. These people that told their significant other that they loved them were broken up in a week’s time.

The girls would wait patiently throughout the day for their bouquet of roses to arrive from their boyfriends and would be extremely upset if their boyfriend had failed to buy and send them these objects of supposed affection.

They would get jealous of other girl’s intimate items and base the rest of their day around the presents that they didn’t receive.

It seemed so materialistic to me and I couldn’t understand why not getting a box of chocolates could upset someone so “in love.”

Some could say that I never fell into the trap of young love because I never had a true boyfriend until age 22. My college friends joke that it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I even started to be romantically interested in anyone.

There was this one young man that kids said I dated first grade through fourth grade. We spoke probably two words to each other over that time period and wrote notes back and forth that our friends would exchange everyday at recess.

Sometimes he would even draw me pictures -- it was an elementary school love story like no other. He would save me kick balls at recess and I would allow him to push me on the swing from time-to-time.

I remember one day one of his friends came up to me and said that Trevor had asked if I would date him. In horror I said, “My dad isn’t going to let me date!” I didn’t realize that dating basically meant, as older generations say, going steady. I thought he was really going to take me out to dinner.

The response that I received was that he didn’t want to pass notes anymore (date). Once I was told those words, my fourth grade self didn’t know how to feel. I felt like I should have been upset and I felt like I should have cried or showed any remorse at all. I went home and held onto the huge heart teddy bear he had left at the office for me a year earlier on Valentine’s Day. All I had to show of our relationship was a stuffed bear. I held onto the materialistic item for the rest of the night as if waiting for it to evoke some kind of emotion from me.

It had been nothing but a playground love and my lack of regret was evident.

Cheesecake Day is something that I still keep with me after all these years later. My college roommates loved the idea and friends soon caught on too.

While some of my friends saw Feb. 14 as national single’s awareness day and spent the day at the local bars, I took it as a positive day.

Some college years I would find cheesecakes left on my doorstep from a friend to make me smile.

I still agree with my father. Love for family, friends and significant others should not only be celebrated one day a year, but instead the people closest to you should know how you feel about them everyday.

Though my father (going soft) in recent years has bought my mom roses and me a rose from local flower stands, I still believe that life lesson he taught me at a young age is something I will carry with me the rest of my existence.

I’ve also learned you can’t go wrong with a good cheesecake either.

Hannah Van Ree can be contacted at [email protected].