Happily bilingual, bicultural family

THE PARENTS: Elizabeth Diffenderfer, 37, and Christhian Sosa García, 41, of Point Breeze

THE KIDS: David Abraham, 6; Emilia María, born Dec. 13, 2021

THEIR NAMES: Liz wanted to honor her father, David, who died in a car accident when she was 12. And it was David who named his sister, when he would kiss Liz’s belly and chatter to “baby Emily.”

Neither Liz nor Christhian was on the guest list for the quinceañera, but each was invited to the party by a mutual friend. Liz had landed in Mexico less than a month before: a Temple University graduate with a double major in Spanish and dance, looking to hone her fluency and have an adventure. Oaxaca was his hometown.

Mostly, what Liz recalls about the evening is feeling underdressed. “I hope no one notices me,” she remembers thinking.

Someone did. She and Christhian talked, danced, and went out after the party ended. She was drawn to his animated style — ”Christhian is very funny, very much the life of the party” — while he admired her independence and determination.

“I remember that he took me to the market and showed me how to buy produce there. He showed me how to make guacamole and different salsas. I was very young, living on my own in another country. I remember being very grateful for that kindness and generosity.”

Christhian is easygoing, a bit disorderly, while Liz describes herself as a textbook type A, organized and planful. “I knew that our personalities could match well,” Christhian says. “That’s what made me realize I could grow as a person.”

Initially, both families were hesitant about the match. “My mom was opposed to me getting married because she knew I would leave Mexico. But my dad told her to let me go because it was a chance to move ahead with my life, that she shouldn’t break my dream.”

And Liz’s parents, initially wary because she was so young, warmed once they’d met Christhian. “They realized how much he loved me, and that it was going to be difficult, but it was worth it.”

Liz remained in Mexico for two years. “We were at a juncture: What do we do? I had to come back [to the United States] to pay my student loans.” She took a teaching job with the Philadelphia School District and spent every break — spring, summer, winter — in Oaxaca.

“It’s a terrible place, limbo-wise, to be,” she says. The two began the process of securing a K-1 “fiancé visa” for Christhian. Once he arrived in the U.S. in June 2011, they needed to marry within 90 days.

They rented a tent and held the ceremony in Liz’s parents’ backyard. Their first dance was to Juan Luis Guerra’s “Que Me Des Tu Cariño” (“Give Me Your Love”). Everyone said the rain — which held off until after the ceremony and photographs — portended good luck.

When still living long-distance, they used to joke that they could have twins and raise them apart — Liz with one child in the U.S., Christhian with the other in Mexico — then switch. Meantime, they bought a house, traveled to Central America and Western Europe, and secured permanent residency for Christhian.

And while neither can recall an explicit conversation about children, “We bought a house with three bedrooms,” Liz says, “so I guess the subtext was there.”

She was about to begin a new job, teaching Spanish at Masterman School, when she learned she was pregnant. Her reaction: “It wasn’t supposed to happen that quickly.”

Though sleeping became a nightly challenge and teaching was exhausting, Liz says she enjoyed being pregnant. She attended a weekly prenatal yoga class and hired a Spanish-speaking nurse to come to the house for coaching on labor and birth.

Then her due date came and went. So did Mother’s Day. Liz ended nearly every day in tears: “Why isn’t this baby coming?” Finally, she felt contractions that accelerated into exactly the kind of birth she hadn’t wanted: an emergency C-section at Pennsylvania Hospital.

“He was having decelerated heartbeats. My labor never progressed. We tried every intervention. I had wanted so much to go natural, and it ended up being completely the opposite. Christhian was the one who said, ‘You just have to let go of what you thought would happen.’ ”

When David (they pronounce it the Spanish way, Da-veed) emerged, Christhian momentarily forgot the English word for boy. But he recalls vividly the love, tenderness, and disbelief — ”he’s really here?” — that surged over him as he saw his son for the first time.

At home, with Christhian’s family in another country and Liz’s parents two hours away, the two sometimes felt marooned with their newborn, stunned and scared by “how fragile they are, the fear we had that something would happen,” Christhian says.

They wanted another. But conception wasn’t happening, and they finally consulted with a fertility specialist in February 2020. The diagnosis: secondary unexplained infertility. “So … OK,” Liz recalls thinking. “You don’t know why we’re not getting pregnant. Now there’s a pandemic. What do we do?” They put baby-making on hold until the fall. When fertility medications and two intrauterine inseminations didn’t yield success, Liz switched her health insurance to a plan that would cover IVF. But before they could start the first cycle, her period was late.

“I was getting ready to go to school one day, bent over to pick something up and immediately wanted to vomit.” The test stick turned pink within seconds. This was a harder pregnancy, not so much because of Liz’s own physical condition, but because of the state of the world: COVID-19 fears; a return to in-person school, teaching with a mask all day in a classroom sticky with September heat.

Emilia was born, via scheduled C-section, 12 days before Christmas. “I remember when they pulled her up, thinking: She does exist. It’s not this fantasy that I’ve concocted,” Liz says.

Now they are emphatically a bilingual, bicultural family: annual Day of the Dead parties with Christhian’s Oaxaca-style hot chocolate; his handmade piñatas for David’s birthdays. They tell David that speaking both English and Spanish is his superpower.

“You see a tree,” Christhian will remind him. “And you can name it in two different languages.”