"In moments like these, your thinking shrinks, sharpens, narrows. The world shutters up and you are reduced to a crystalline pinpoint, to a single purpose: to keep your child alive, to ensnare her in the world of the living, to hang on to her and never let go."
"As the child's fever rises and the telltale buboes of the plague begin to swell along her neck, Agnes keeps anxious vigil over her and turns instinctively to the remedies she has learned to trust, grinding dried rhubarb stalk with rue, thyme, and cinnamon in a mortar."
Maggie O'Farrell's memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, details her seventeen brushes with death, including childhood illness and near-misses. One chapter focuses on the fear of caring for her daughter, who faces serious health crises. During a severe allergic reaction, O'Farrell describes the overwhelming instinct to protect her child, emphasizing the singular focus on survival. This intensity is mirrored in Lolita Chakrabarti's stage adaptation, which portrays Agnes Shakespeare's desperate care for her sick daughter Judith amidst the plague, highlighting the emotional weight of parental love and fear.
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