A Host, a Guest, and our Lifetime Relationship: Another Hour with Grandma Havitz

Abstract

This autoethnographic narrative explores my evolving personal relationship with my paternal grandmother. Written from a feminist perspective, I explore issues related to gender, life course, leisure and family, recognizing that virtually our entire shared lives occurred in contexts wherein I was on vacation and she was not. Our relationship was also influenced by the spatial context of the central Wisconsin dairy farm where she worked and lived through most of her adult life, and generational nuances specific to her time. The preface is intended to provide scholarly context for the personal issues discussed in the body of text. After reading this preface, readers can proceed to www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~mhavitz/grandma/presentation.html for the full text.

Keywords:

• autoethnography
• family vacations
• family leisure
• rural leisure
• feminist critique

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my father Ed (Junior) Havitz, my aunt and uncle Rosemary and Virgil Seavers, my uncles Lloyd and Jack Havitz, my cousins Pam (Seavers) Thomson and Brian Havitz, my first cousin once removed Shelby Thomson, my sister Lynn (Havitz) Hansen, my stepmother Pam Fulton and Steven Zywicki of the UWSP Alumni and University Relations office for their assistance with the development of this paper. As well, I acknowledge Lowell Williamson and Keith McGowan of the University of Waterloo for their assistance with technical aspects of the presentation and the anonymous Leisure Sciences reviewers for their insightful comments on the original draft. In addition to those listed above, this paper has been vetted by approximately two dozen members of three generations of the Havitz family. The paper is dedicated to Karla Henderson, who lit the intellectual spark that led to its creation.

Author's note: An earlier draft was presented to the Eleventh Canadian Congress on Leisure Research hosted by Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, BC, May 2005. An abstract was published in the CCLR Proceedings.