His father researched the family tree for years.
Four hundred years of firstborn sons.
An unbroken column of men, each one passing the name to the next.
I felt it before anyone said it,
the pressure to give the line a son.
No one asked it of me.
The family tree itself did.
After Padme, we tried again and again.
Months folded into years.
Our oldest, Petra, was five and six then.
When we were in Sai Kung,
she had us stop at the temple.
She prayed for a baby brother.
Burning joss sticks held in palms pressed,
knees on the stone.
I never told her not to.
I told myself it didn’t matter.
That I was complete.
That daughters were enough.
But the story of the line weighed on my womb.
I was ovulating at the Hecker’s Hotel in Berlin when we finally conceived before breakfast.
Before pan-fried eggs, bacon, potatoes, and freshly shucked oysters at KaDeWe.
At four months, the ultrasound showed a girl.
Petra threw a fit.
She screamed that it wasn’t fair,
that she had prayed for a baby brother.
When the call came from Michelle,
he sat across from me at home.
He seemed relieved, even though I felt I failed.
This one was heavy.
From the start, my hips slipped, my spine tilted.
Michelle called it subluxations.
All I felt was gravity.
I could barely walk.
I leaned against counters to breathe.
Everything hurt.
Pheby, our baby not yet born,
made space inside me like I did not matter.
Too comfortable.
Too overdue.
Too big for me to birth her naturally.
I was carrying three generations in one body:
Myself, my daughter, and the potential she already held in her body.
Michelle was there again.
“She’s huge,” she said when the cry came.
5.2 kilos. Two weeks late.
I didn’t feel birth. I heard it.
Michelle stitched me up again and repeated: “You did well, honey.”
The line of men ended with me.
Our daughters will carry his name,
the one I took when I married him.
That is how the line continues now.
That is enough.
Today she turned 8.
Happy birthday baby.
