About Linda Naseem

I opened my eyes to this world on September 24, 1949, in the old army hospital at Ft. Ord, California, the oldest child of M/Sgt Michael and Mrs. Harriet Hofer. My dad was the first American-born son of Croatian immigrants, and my mother was the granddaughter of Prussian farmers.

In 1967 I graduated from Seaside High School, Seaside, California, and in 1977 I received an Associate Degree in Nursing (RN) from El Paso Community College (now called Pikes Peak CC) in Colorado Springs. I also attended Västmanlands Läns Landstings Vårdskolan (nursing school) in Västerås, Sweden, for a year. (Yes, I can speak Swedish, although I'm terribly rusty. I could speak some Hausa at one time, too, but all that's left of that is a couple stains on my tongue.)

My nursing shoes have sprinted down the long hallways of a county jail, a renal-diabetic unit, two AIDS units and two long-term care facilities. They tiptoed between patients lying on the floors of two over-crowded Nigerian hospitals and stood for hours squelching in the heat of a Nigerian OR. For the last few years of my nursing career I was HIV/AIDS certified. I retired in 2012.

While an Army brat I lived in (besides Ft. Ord) Hawaii, Ohio, California, Virginia, and Germany. When no longer "Army" I nested briefly in Colorado, Sweden, Nigeria, and several towns in California.

As you can guess, all that moving around has put me in a constant state of homesickness: I always long to be somewhere else.

I currently call Colorado home. I recently remarried and now share space with a lovely man named Don.