Sad to realise that my grandmother has no interests outside the men in her life

[RomaniIteDomum]

I am the family cake maker.
My grandmother turns 90 this year so I was planning a special cake.
I usually theme cakes to the recipient and their interest so I sat down yesterday and started sketching ideas. But I realised that this woman has practically no interests.

Every interest she has or had is in relation to the men in her life.

She has been defined her whole life by either being her father's daughter (still is to many of the older generation in about town), her husband's wife or her sons' mother.

I was chatting to my sister about ideas and all we could come up with is gundogs, gardening and rugby.
The gundogs were in relation to her father and his job, the garden was out of necessity because my grandfather wanted and enjoyed a big garden, and the rugby was because all her sons played.

Everything she watched on the TV was dictated by my grandfather.

She didn't read, cook or go to any social clubs.

I just find it all a bit sad.

I don’t know where your grandmother lives / lived, but her life doesn’t sound dissimilar to the lives of many women in rural communities today. Maybe that is the aspect of her life which you aren’t familiar with?

Out of interest, OP, do you have hobbies other than making cakes?

If someone had to make a cake themed around your hobbies, what would it be?

Because making cakes is probably the closest thing I have to a hobby, and I am quite tickled by the idea of somebody else making a cake for my 90th birthday on the theme of me making cakes.

If she enjoyed gardening, gundogs and rugby, doesn't matter if the originial influence came from men she loved?

My two greatest interests were originally shared with my dad and my DH, neither does them anymore but they're still very important to me. I find your view of GM pretty dismissive, why don't her interests count?

She didn't read, cook or go to any social clubs.

Save me from a world where that's considered a better option for me than Gardening, gundogs and rugby. 😆

Base it around the year she was born......and there's absolutely nothing wrong with a woman being devoted to her family. Even if her family happens to be predominantly male.

I think this is a mean spirited way to look at another woman. If there is a sad thing it is that she brought up a family and now her granddaughters pity her for not having much about her.

I agree

I would put things on tge cake that other people liked, not her. Just do a lovely cake with a big 90 on it.

@RomaniIteDomum

It's easy stick a gundog in a garden chewing on a rugby ball.

It's not deeply depressing and I' m sure she would be really upset with your limited way of thinking. Whose to say she doesn't think the same about your way of life?
I meet a lot of elderly women and one thing they all have in common is they say "We had the best years" Most of them think we're completely mad running around like headless chickens , stressed, depressed and addicted to either food, anti depressants alcohol, shopping, and botox because sadly that's how many women of this generation survive.

IKR?!

But there's nothing to suggest that if she'd had a choice, she'd have chosen differently.

My Mum is a few years younger than your Granny. She and I have discussed the difference in our generations in the past. What we concluded was it was all about choice, and my Mum didn't think I necessarily had the breadth of choice she'd hoped I would.

When she was younger my Mum campaigned for equal opportunities for women. She wanted choice available for herself and other women.

But she still chose to stay at home. She looked after us, she helped with homework, she looked after the house.

What she wasn't happy about though was that for all her work to have opportunities available to women, my generation largely lost the option of being SAHMs. The frequent need for 2 incomes to support a family meant many women can no longer choose to stay at home with their families.

I find it sad that the work these women did supporting their families, and as a previous poster said, devoting themselves to their families, is considered to be less.

The focus these days is so much about doing, rather than what all that doing achieves. If at the end of her life your Granny can say she loved people and they loved her, isn't that great. If she can look at her family as the output of her life's efforts, and be happy with what resulted from her effort, brilliant. And no one else should judge her life unfavourably.

So just go with happy birthday then

She sounds fabulous personally 😊

This.

Also, I've come across many people who just don't get excited by hobbies and interests. My mother is one - put a gun to my head and I couldn't tell you her 'favourite' anything. She's got no men in her life so that's not a factor. But she's perfectly happy just going through life and taking a vague interest in everything, and she loves spending time with people.

I don't find anything sad or strange about it. Lots of people end up with interests because of their family.

Surely it is good to have both, you can love your family and have interests. For so long women were and are to some extent not be anyone but mum. But mum is a person too. It also helps your children realise that women are people too with interests that don’t just exist to revolve around men.

You feel sad at her lack of independent hobbies but think she should have cooked more?

Also how is gardening not a hobby?

There is nothing wrong with having a happy life looking after your family. Maybe she liked pottering around at home and couldn’t be arsed to have hobbies. It seems a really weird thing to suddenly judge a 90 year old for!

but think she should have cooked more?

I mentioned that for no other reason than it was a hobby of other women in our/her life.

Her auntie and my sister are both phenomenal chefs.

To various PPs, yes she lived in a really rural area but near enough to a town that it could be walked easily enough.

And how do I know she hated gardening, well I was brought up by her in my teens and she moaned about it often enough.

And yes I have multiple hobbies outside of baking.

Also how is gardening not a hobby?

It's not a hobby if you do it because you have to, rather than because you want to.

WOULDN'T put things on the cake that other people liked, not her.

Well life is long and you have zero insight into the first 50-60 years of hers! Because you weren't there. And you have no idea how rich or otherwise her memories are, how she makes sense of her life. Which is what matters, not what you her granddaughter thinks of her life. You really do sound quite condescending.

I am assuming OP that you are way past your teens, re gardening comment.
Presumably, when your grandmother was bringing you up, gardening was way down on her list of priorities.
Times change, interests change, and to assume that gardening can't possibly be a hobby because your grandmother moaned about it when you were a teenager and "it's something you have to do"...there speaks a non gardener.

I'm not presuming. She voiced her hatred of it multiple times.

She liked HAVING a garden but hated the maintenance.

If she could have afforded a Gardner she probably would have had one.

You'll probably find that if she's 90 then they didn't have an awful lot of time for hobbies. Life was much less convenient back then. You are looking at her through completely different lenses.