How does Joyce Carol Oates use imagery in We Were the Mulvaneys?

Example of Imagery:

"'I believe what God requires me to believe, Patrick. I would not ask of Him that He explain His motives any more that I would wish that any of you might ask me why I love you.' Mom paused, wiping at her eyes. Our hearts beat like metronomes. 'It was providence, and it is, that I was spared from death in 1938 so that--' and here Mom paused again, drawing in her breath sharply, her eyes suffused with a special luster, gazing upon her family one by one, with what crazy unbounded love she gazed upon us, and at such a moment my heart would contract as if this woman who was my mother had slipped her fingers inside my rib cage to contain it, as you might hold a wild, thrashing bird to comfort it, '--so that you children--Mikey, Patrick, Marianne, and Judd--could be born.'" Family Pictures: Providence, pg. 64