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 I got pregnant before breakfast.