"When you get old," Olive told Andrea after the girl had walked away, "you become invisible. It's just the truth. And yet it's freeing in a way."
Olive feels that the older she has become, the less she is noticed by society as a whole. She could have a point; how often are people over seventy years old referred to by the media as "the elderly" or "seniors", as a generic age-group collective in way that younger generations are not? It's quite insulting, to be noticed less and to matter less, just because one has become old.
Yet she also finds some liberation in the fact and this might explain why older people can seem eccentric, like Olive; they don't have the societal constraints that their younger selves once had. Olive feels that she is more free now than she used to be because people pay less attention to what she is doing, wearing or saying. She can do what pleases her instead of what pleases others. There are fewer expectations, and, therefore, greater freedom.
God, Olive, you're a difficult woman. You are such a goddamn difficult woman and fuck all, I love you. So if you don't mind, Olive, maybe you could be a little less Olive with me, even if it means being a little more Olive with others. Because I love you, and we don't have much time.
Olive is renowned for having a difficult, scratchy and frankly rather cantankerous personality. She does not mean to but she has a tendency to address others with impatience, and this extends even more to men she is married to or in a relationship with. Jack knows this, and loves her anyway, but he knows also that he is not going to be able to put up with her Olive-ness on a day to day basis as her spouse. This dilemma could be solved if she softened her personality a little bit around him. He also understands that she is who she is, and that if she is going to make a special effort to be softer, and nicer, then she is going to find that difficult, and might feel frustrated if she feels that she is not able to speak her mind. This can be rectified by speaking her mind more bluntly or more frequently than usual to other people, offsetting her new gentler demeanor around Jack.
