My life was not always as chaotically colorful as it happens to be right now. But that's because I didn't always live in Puerto Rico. I was born Susan Jane Lostocco and raised in Wethersfield, Connecticut -- a quiet, peaceful little town in picturesque New England. Life was fairly predictable in Wethersfield. I went to school with my four brothers and sisters, was laughed at, picked on, bullied -- all the usual things that happen to kids who don't quite fit in -- and then I went home and found solace in the pages of my books. I worked at the public library, developed an interest in history, spent summers as a docent at the Webb Deane Stevens Museums (pictured above right), and hours strolling through the village graveyard -- lost among the tombstones. Nobody ever bothered me there and I felt at peace. I read, wrote in my journal, and thought a lot about the lives of the people whose names were etched on the stone markers. Even though I didn't know it then, I was becoming a writer.

After graduating from Wethersfield High School, I went to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania to study American history. One thing I had learned in my eighteen years was that even though I hated Wethersfield's public schools, I loved my town -- its history, colonial houses, churches, and cementaries. It was therefore a logical next step: get out of New England and study what I loved. Well, you know what happens in college. The mind expands, and with it, one's dreams. After graduation from college, I started to study Spanish, worked as a waitress (post-graduate reality), saved up some money, and then left the following year for Seville Spain.

That's when life started getting really interesting. I fell in love -- not with a Spaniard as I had secretly hoped -- but with a wonderful man from India named Govind Nadathur. As Pastor Marcoux said in his homily when he married us at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Wethersfield, "Our God is a God of surprises. Unpredictable, but wonderfully marvelous." Twenty three years later, I know God is pleased that he chose to put Govind and I together.

Those twenty-three years were rarely easy. Govind and I moved several times, from Spain to California, and finally to Puerto Rico. Each move brought trials, tears, challenges, and incredible joys. We celebrated the birth of our daughter in Santa Barbara, agonized over my husband's ten-year battle with cancer in Puerto Rico, found victory in perserverance, and unity in loneliness. We don't quite fit into the culture of Puerto Rico, but in not fitting in, we belong. The legacy of Wethersfield lives in me, and through me, my husband and my daughter. We are three loving misfits in a chaotically colorful world.