People used to look forward to the year 2000.

Grandpa told me that once, on the aft deck of the deportation ship, as we watched the lean dark sea slip into our churning wake. He talked across the gusting, steel-cold wind, and I could barely hear him.

Two thousand was a magical number, he said. It guarded the promise of a beautiful future, like a magical seal. When we broke through the seal, it all started falling apart, he said. The planes in New York were the butterfly that started the hurricane.

At least that’s what I think he said; the butterflies and all. Maybe it was a figure of speech. Mandarin is difficult and I’d only started learning it a little earlier, when the order came through that we were all to leave.

After the planes in New York there were the wars – the one in Iraq and the bigger one in Syria, glimpsed in shaky videos of crumbling buildings and men with guns on dusty streets, and after that the troubles back home, with the oil running out and the bombings, when school was cancelled and we waited in the living room with the lights off, and no food; and mother who sung to us but stopped, and I touched her cheek and found it wet with tears.

That night on the ship, Grandpa watched the lights of LA until they sank beneath the horizon and we were surrounded by dark sky and the heaving sea, hard as slate.

The year 2000 is still a symbol, he said then. It’s the mark of what we lost. The last good year.

I bundled him into the cabin, shivering in a tattered ship’s blanket.

The wind swallowed his words whole.