Someday, I hope to be a grandmother. Even better—a great-grandmother.

I’ll be lavish with love and cookies. I’ll be ready to play, deaf to creaky joints. I may even get a grandma hairdo—a puffy swan-white perch for a daisy infested plastic rainbonnet. My purse will contain a paper bag stuffed with Hammond’s hard candies and perhaps an emergency Depends.

I hope to embrace aging with grace, humor, and every cliche in the known universe. Doesn’t everyone love the granny bearing fruit salad and non sequiturs? Then, she sky dives.

I want to make it clear I respect my elders and look forward to meeting my children’s children someday.

But I don’t want to be there yet.

Today, as I bought two logs of sugar cookie dough and a jumbo vat of vanilla whipped frosting for a school project, the clerk helpfully pushed the cart through the checkout lane to me, where I waited on the other end. Beatrix smiled and bounced in the cart’s seat.

The clerk cooed, “Here, honey, do you want your grandma? Mom? Grandma-mom?”

The clerk looked up at me, overplucked eyebrows raised in panting expectation.

Not able to look the clerk in the eye, I said to Beatrix, “Come see mama!” as I pulled the cart through, grabbed the grocery sack, and headed for the exit.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!”

I heard the clerk’s voice behind me, so I turned to see what she wanted.

“Ma’am? You haven’t paid.”

Maybe she had a point.