The Years

by Annie Ernaux

We lived in close proximity to shit. It made us laugh.

She continues to contribute to her children’s material welfare to compensate for any pain they may endure in their lives, for which she feels responsible, having brought them into the world. She has decided they should enjoy life in spite of the short-term contracts for which they are overqualified, unemployment insurance or freelance work, depending on the month. Their lives are a pure present of music, American TV series, and video games, as if they continued to live as students, or impecunious artists in an old-style bohemian existence, so far removed from the settled life that had been hers at their age. (She does not know if their social nonchalance is real or feigned.)