How does the imagery of towels and linen develop the idea of changing and unchanging elements in the mother's life.
Towels and linen, once introduced in the 5th stanza, become an extended metaphor for the mother's life and everything she stood for. When she died she was folding a little towel' typifies the mother's life. She was a person who required cleanliness, and stood by values and habits she held her entire life, like every little towel should be folded. It also holds greater significance along with the belief that what we die becomes what we are remembered for, Gwen Harwood will remember her mother for being tidy and that was what she died doing.
Her life has been so long and full of wonder, yet it compresses so neatly in the mind in the same way that everything in her house was compressed and looked after a fabric of marvels folded down to a little space'. She dealt with her memories, life and indeed death in the same neat and courteous way that she dealt with the linen in her house; it is symbolic of her inner being. Her life, as with the folded towel, is much larger than it is initially perceived to be and Gwen is emphasising how little she knows about her mother but yet how clearly she understands the overall picture. The image of her fabric of marvels' is one not unlike a quilt where each marvel joins to another to make up the whole. Gwen is in admiration of this way of dealing so cleanly and neatly with life.
The next stanza extends the metaphor into including that her life has been based on qualities of linen to the extent that she herself has began to take on the properties of linen which are so desirable and saw your face crumple, fine threadbare linen worn, still good to the last, then, somehow, smooth to a smile'. Linens properties, in this case, are that it is strong and that although it may look crumpled' it is able be smoothed back to the way it originally was, unlike some other materials.