A COLLECTION OF CLASS ESSAYS BY OLLI MEMBERS FROM:
MAGIC of MICRO MEMOIR - ASU OLLI CLASS SPRING 2026
TAUGHT BY: Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski
POSTED: April 7, 2026
Forward by: Aimee Shramko
This spring Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD to her students) offered a well attended two-session class entitled The Magic of Micro Memoir. A memoir is a non-fictional personal narrative typically written in first person. It differs from an autobiography in that it is meant to cover only a segment or sampling of a person’s life instead of a comprehensive, chronological telling.
In the first class RD guided us through crafting a memoir using only six words; a humbling lesson in brevity and confidence building. She taught us the elements that make a story a memoir, and the difference between a flash memoir (750 words), and a micro memoir (250 words).
RD then presented the enticing invitation to write our own micro memoir - on any topic we chose. She introduced us to Brevity magazine which showcases “well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief essay form (750 words or fewer)” to provide us with examples of how it's done: Brevity Magazine A Journal of Concise Literary Non-Fiction.
In session two, students who chose to do so read their memoirs to the class. The feedback, support, and appreciation we received was most certainly worth the effort. In the process, we learned about our fellow classmates, the challenges and hardships they encountered, the illnesses they had conquered, special memories that they treasure, and what amazing people our OLLI members are!
Here we present the essays of those participants who elected to have their writing published on the ASU OLLI Community Blog, ASU OLLI Blog.. We hope you enjoy the introduction to your fellow students and the journey through their lives.
Disappointed that you missed this awesome class? Don’t despair! RD will be back with new and engaging classes in summer and fall!
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I’m Fine
By: Colleen Fisher
This is a story of my beautiful mom, Janice Woelfle, at the end of her life. Neither of us knew it was the end, though. She was intensely proud, beautiful, poised, and everything she touched was perfection. This tug of war piece reflects her fierce self- determination, but wanting connection at the same time.
Colleen and Her Mother Janice
“I’m fine, just fine,” she says, proud, beautifully coiffed, and adorned. I look around. House perfect, no cobwebs, no clutter, no nonsense. My stepdad is gone, and her companion now is a cocker spaniel cozily curled on her lap. She informs me I cannot have him. “I know you are fine” ... I am tripping -not-walking- on eggshells. Grief is thick ---she lost her love-- and I am anticipating what is to come. “Please let me help you…”
MOM.
“I’m sick,” she now calls one thousand miles away. Dog barking. My body is tense. “Please go to the doctor. I will call someone to help.” She rebuffs me. I am desperate to change her mind. Her voice edgier and more defiant, she declares “I will take care of myself and… leave me alone”
Fine
At the same time, I remembered my youth when I was shivering with fever. Mom’s worried brow; feeling my forehead. “I made an appointment with the doctor. You do not have a choice,” she says over my cries. Now I am the one telling her she has no choice…” I absolutely
do,” she says...
“It is my life.”
“I’m sick,” days later, she calls again. I send people. I send neighbors. I send family. She dismisses everyone. I beg. She is in bed now. “I’m fine,” she says, hanging up. She calls again and sighs. “Ok, you can call 911.,” One thousand miles away, I arrange emergency services.
Too little, too late….
Joining her love…
But now…
I am not fine.
Colleen Fisher is a wife and mother, a grandmother, and owner of three barky dogs (and yes, including her mother's Cocker Spaniel, Rooster).. She and her husband reside in Gilbert, Arizona.
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A Norman Rockwell Christmas Card
By: Kaden Sheffield
The sweet smell of the tree, standing finally upright in front of the picture window filled with falling snow.
The rustle of the tissue paper in cellophane-paneled boxes as my father removed the hand-blown spheres my father’s grandmother had brought from Germany with his war-mangled hands filled with shrapnel he’d received while fighting in her home country.
The yellow wooden step ladder’s creak as he climbed, holding the gently swinging ornament like a priest holding a censer.
The monotonous murmured instructions to my mother: which ornaments to take from the box, how to hold each, how to hand them up, like a catechism.
The sharp crack and tinkle of something breaking, like icicles falling from the roof.
The roar of my father, his face a darkening red sphere, like an ornament.
The reflection in the picture window bending as the force of voice struck cold glass.
The air suddenly vanishing, the dive for cover.
The cowering in the darkness under the coffee table, like a dog in a storm.
The waiting. The ominous silence.
The scraping of flannel knees on rough wool carpet, sliding out to see the way cars slow down at accidents.
The summer-blue eyes of my mother, no winter-gray, fixed on my father’s hands as she lifts the next ornament.
The delicate transfer of something precious between them.
The three of us sitting on the soft, warm sofa, admiring the tree standing silently glittering, like a Southern Belle, in the picture window.
Outside was the snow.
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Don’t Tell Mom
By: Mark Faller
My co-conspirator that day at Disney World was my daughter, Katie, about to turn 13. We were in Florida to watch her sister, a high school senior, in a national cheerleading competition. When siblings are adults, a 5-year age difference is nothing, and today these two are close as can be. Back then,though, the older sister got first dibs on all the new, cool moments of life. As a first born, I remember how easy it was for the younger ones to feel left out.
At first, I didn’t know how to make this trip special for Katie. Sure, we spent time with her grandparents and spent a day at Busch Gardens, but we knew where the spotlight always was shining.
And then …
Sister’s team stunningly failed to reach the finals.
Her team was compelled to remain together the rest of the day. We were not.
Katie (foreground) with her sister, Annie, at the Universal Cheerleading Association championships at the Wide World of Sports complex in Kissimmee, Fla.
There was my opportunity.
Back we went to the Magic Kingdom, just the two of us. Grandpa needed little convincing not to spend big bucks just to sit and watch Katie on rides, and off he went back home.
Somehow, Katie understood how special this night could be. She might have been a budding teenager, but she embraced her last bit of “little kid” – and so did I. We acted like we owned the place. We rode countless rides, sometimes twice. And we had ice cream. Twice. Root beer floats, then Mickey Mouse ice cream bars.
We knew this was a forever moment, just for us.
“Don’t tell Mom.”
Mark and Katie at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla.
Mark Faller is a retired sports journalist who lives in Cave Creek.
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On the post-ICU dance floor, dancing the Recovery Cha-cha-cha,…
By: Liisa Walimaa
Go, they say.
I take two steps forward.
One step back.
Two more steps forward.
One back— into darkness.
The step back is part of it, they say.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Cha-cha into strength. Cha-cha into health. The Recovery Cha-cha-cha.
*
In the ICU glare, they said I died. Six times.
You are a miracle, they said.
You are so lucky, they said.
You are so loved, they said.
*
The band clasped their instrument cases. Closed.
We’re done, they said.
I’m not done. I’m still dancing. It’s just…
slow.
Do the steps, they ordered. Speed up. Style. Pivot through pain. Smile.
I try.
Two steps forward. I slide backward.
My struggle is syncopated. The weak
beats get emphasis.
I do everything more slowly than
before.
While I am re-buckling my shoes, they kill the lights
*
In the darkness, all I know is that as I take two steps forward, so does Time, so does Age. They don’t step back. Rude Time and Age barge through the progressive lane like it belongs only to them.
So, my Cha-cha-cha becomes a partner dance, too. With joined hands, joined hearts, joined goals, we respond to the music of the Universe, follow cues from each other. He side-eyes Time, sneers at Age, daring them to complicate our choreography. We continue our slow progression, two steps forward, one step back.
*
You are so loved, they said, back then in the glare.
Now, in this darkness, I believe it.
Liisa Walimaa (ASU, B.A. Eng, 1992), "the healthiest woman anyone knew," contracted Influenza-A in December 2023. Complications led to sepsis, respiratory failure, and an intensive, extensive hospitalization. She credits her husband's attention, intelligence, and advocacy with her survival. She relates their experience in her genre-spanning memoir, Flotsamalgamation: a love story, coming Summer 2026. She lives and writes in Chandler, AZ.
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On Baking a Cake
By: Judy Conrad
The minute I knew they were coming to Arizona to visit relatives, I staked my claim on a few hours of my grandson and his “really special” girlfriend's time...we will finally meet her. “Let's bake your favorite chocolate cake together!” I suggested. Sean and Carly loved the idea. So did my son, Steve—Sean's dad.
It was okay to ask for help with the cake. I am fast approaching my 87th birthday, and recently completed a round of chemo for stage four colon cancer. I don't do that much cooking any more, but the cake marks special occasions.
We gather in my small kitchen, now very crowded with the three of us. The cake ingredients are laid out. I order Sean around, as he expects. We are quite comfortable with each other. I am careful with Carly, who is charming and lovely. I want her to feel relaxed and instantly loved—to know she can do no wrong.
Carly sifts the flour as Sean stirs together the melting butter, cocoa, and buttermilk on the stove. The cake comes together quickly, with lots of cheerful teasing back and forth, and one moment of surprised laughter when Sean accidentally sets the mixer at highest speed and bits of chocolate batter fly everywhere—mostly onto us.
* * * *
We three generations sit down to enjoy this much-discussed cake. Steve is quietly happy just to be here with his mom, older son, and a possible new daughter-in-law. I nibble at the cake, savoring each moment with family. Carefully, I store this new memory away and hold it close. Sean and Carly devour the cake in a few bites, knowing they have the recipe and can whip it up anytime. The days stretch endlessly before them.
Judy Conrad, a longtime Phoenix resident, was a flutist/piccoloist with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra for almost 20 years. She then dedicated another 20 years as Artistic Director and flute faculty at Rosie’s House, https://rosieshouse.org/ a free music academy for children in Phoenix. The organization was founded on the belief that music education is a catalyst for changing a child's life, which she witnessed many times over in her years there.
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Pay It Forward
By: Sally Lloyd
Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, allowing men and women, including former slaves, to own 160 acres in the west if they lived on, improved, and cultivated that land for five years. Sadly, Native Americans, who’d been there forever, couldn’t be homesteaders -- they weren’t granted citizenship until 1924.
Both my paternal grandparents proved up homesteads on the tall-grass prairie of northwest Nebraska. They combined their acres, married, and raised a family.
Decades later, I grew up on that prairie. I knew Native American Sioux had been there, since we hunted for arrowheads near buffalo wallows or by creeks where they’d pitched their teepees. I naively didn’t question why they left.
My childhood was idyllic. In the summers, we ran barefoot through the grass, picked wildflowers, and looked for moccasin beads in ant hills. The rest of the year, in one-room schoolhouses, we learned everything except the history of where we lived.
My consciousness was raised only decades later. The homesteaded land had been sold and my parents were gone. I had failed to ask about the family history or even their thoughts about my brother marrying a Lakota Sioux woman from the impoverished reservation across the Nebraska-South Dakota border.
I can’t change history. Reparations won’t come anytime soon. What I can do is work for Native American justice, while also helping my brother’s step-children, orphaned after he and their mother died, hoping for them as good a life as I had growing up on their ancestral lands.
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Singapore Wet-Market, 1956
By: Mark Hendrickson
My five-year-old senses took it all in as I followed Mom through a maze of stalls loaded with luscious fruits and crisp vegetables. Gunny sacks bulged with beans, rice, and ikan bilis—dried Malayan anchovies. Everything was arranged in orderly displays of shape and color.
The foot traffic was steady but not overly crowded. Everyone was talking at once—hawking, bargaining, and chattering. Tamil, Malay, and Cantonese floated through the air. Mom, speaking Malay, added her voice.
The fresh fish and meat sections announced themselves with that off-putting smell—fish and raw meat. Mom selected a fish with bright, slippery scales and clear eyes.
The meat vendors displayed all manner of animal parts—heads, hearts, livers, and the unidentifiable. I was both drawn and repelled, with the same fascinated, queasy reaction I would later experience in medical school—treating trauma victims at San Francisco General.
With our basket full, we left—satisfied.
Approaching the car park, we passed a mound of rotting produce. Beside it squatted a young Tamil woman wearing a threadbare yellow sari. Her pottu indicated marriage and held cultural and mystical significance.
She carried an infant on one hip using a selendang—a carrying cloth. Two barefoot children played nearby. The boy, a toddler, wore only a soiled button-up shirt. The girl, about four, wore a stained, tattered dress that reached her knees.
A gunny sack at her side, the woman dug through the decomposing food. The last view I had—craning my neck as we walked past—was of her holding a root vegetable. She used her thumbnail to push out a rotted area, then carefully placed the family’s next meal into her sack.
The image—now fainter—returns sometimes, bringing sadness and a pang of guilt for my fortunate circumstances.
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Key Limes
By: Julia Fleeman
We had a Key Lime tree beside our house when I was young. I loved to see KC, a stray cat who loved our dog and adopted us, lounging under the tree, like a lion in a painting by Henri Rousseau.
My father played tennis on his days off. He would take Key Limeade to share with the other players. The tree yielded more fruit than we could use, so he would bring in the tiny Key limes and squeeze them into a juicer. Some juice went into pies, some into the freezer and some into a large thermos for the tennis courts at Flamingo Park. Rousseau painted flamingos, too.
Key Limes are green on the inside and yellow on the outside. They are like little yellow ping-pong balls, with leathery peels. Sliced open, they reveal a pale, acidic fruit with a stronger fragrance than that of their Persian cousins. Added to sweetened condensed milk, and egg yolks, the filling looks yellow.
I am always amused when people add green food coloring to a Key Lime pie. The name is for the type of fruit, not the place of origin. It is a Key Lime pie, not a Key lime pie. Key Limes were developed in the Florida Keys. They withstood the saltiness of the sea breezes. The 1926 hurricane wiped out the commercial crop, but home growers continued to cultivate them.
KC disappeared on New Year’s Eve, 1975. He climbed into the bed of a workman’s truck and was driven away. The tree, the house and my parents are gone, too. Today, most Key Limes are grown in Mexico.
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Entanglement
By: Jerry Grula
My cancer is back. Again. Six years of diagnoses, treatments, and dreams that this time will be different. I am the mythical Sisyphus, once again pushing my rock of hope up the hill of health.
Radiation treatments have begun, and will only last a week. Then we wait, for weeks, months, longer, to gauge the effects. I'm not a patient person.
I posted the news on social media. I hate being the bearer of bad news, but my extended friends and family deserve to know. Many have sent me positive thoughts, prayers, and good vibes.
One friend qualified her post in a humorous and caring way, saying she didn't know if there was scientific evidence of good vibes working, but it's gotta count for something! Another friend agreed. I smiled and wondered: do vibes work?
I truly appreciate the well-wishes, so in that respect they help. And I'm sure that the sender feels good about them. But do they objectively influence things?
Maybe.
Physics has a strange phenomenon called "quantum entanglement," where particles become so deeply linked that they influence each other, instantly, regardless of distance. They have no idea how it works; Einstein called it "spooky." But it has been scientifically proven.
Perhaps your positive thoughts are entangled with a cancer researcher. Perhaps your prayers are entangled with me through God. Perhaps your good vibes are entangled with my immune system.
They work, perhaps more than we know.
Hope remains. One more push.
Jerry Grula is a retired technology business leader with experience in sales, marketing, product management, consulting, and engineering. He grew up in northeast Pennsylvania and moved to Phoenix in 1989, where he started his career and met his wife. He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from ASU, and all three of his children are Sun Devil graduates. His interests include golf, exercise, sports, puzzles, music, fantasy football, technology, lifelong learning, and helping to publish the ASU OLLI Blog.
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Night At the Hollywood Bowl
By: Aimee Shramko
It’s that time in between the spaces that always catches me off guard and takes my breath away. For most the magic interplay goes unnoticed, but to me, it is the essence of the experience.
On soft summer nights, before every performance, the subtle drama unfolds. A gentle breeze lifts the pine needles ever so slightly. A chill creeps into the humid air thickened by fog from the ocean miles away. A mix of perfumes, perhaps a bit of cannabis, wafts through. A sudden hush blankets the audience calling for attention.
The picnics are over, the containers and utensils hastily stashed away. The wine has been flowing, and the crowd is pleasantly relaxed, satiated, anticipating the music to come. Only one pale star in the sky is visible, the rest wait in the wings for their cue.
Suddenly, someone loses their grip on an empty glass bottle in an attempt to secure it under their seat. It clinks sharply on the rough, bumpy concrete rolling…in slow motion…down the steps as its owner cringes. The crispness of the glass and the hollowness of the bottle create music of its own. Someone giggles, others frown. I enjoy the all too human interruption of nature’s perfection.
As the focus turns to the stream of musicians striding across the stage, crossed searchlights appear above to pierce the darkness. I breathe it all in, relishing the moment, fully present. This is home to me, my Los Angeles.
Aimee Shramko, a former advertising executive, grew up in Santa Monica,CA and received her undergraduate degree from UCLA. After earning an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management/ASU, she spent several decades leading creative and tech teams to develop branding campaigns and customer focused websites. A resident of the Valley of the Sun for fifteen years, she devotes her time to supporting OLLI, the arts, and exploring new destinations.
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ABOUT OUR INSTRUCTOR:
Dr. Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ, the founding editor of rinky dink press, and the founding director of Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that facilitates self-care and healing through poetry. She is the recipient of an Arts Hero Award, a Great 48 award, a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, an Arizona Humanities Speaker of the Year award, and an Arizona Capital Times Leader of the Year award.
RD has published three collections of poetry: The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press, 2014), The Philosophy of Unclean Things (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and The Cleavage Planes of Southwest Minerals [A Love Story], winner of the 2017 Split Rock Review chapbook competition. She was named a finalist for both the Whitman Bicentennial Award (2019) and the Joy Harjo Poetry Contest (2023), and her work has been featured on the TEDx stage, NPR, and in numerous publications.
RD is a Teaching Professor at Arizona State University specializing in medical poetry, the poetry of witness, and DIY print culture. She is the founding faculty editor of ISSUED: stories of service, the creator of Verses for Vets, and the faculty editor of Grey Matter, the medical poetry journal at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.
She lives in Phoenix with her son (B) and her three cats (PB&J).
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