Remembering Old Friends

I don't really know why, but I have been thinking about my childhood a lot lately.  To much time on my hands maybe, or maybe it's just part of getting older.  At any rate the thoughts keep coming so I thought I would write some of them down.

There are seven of us girls, of which I am the oldest.  I have two other sisters who are really close to the same age as me.  We lived way out in the country.  Then it was 12 miles out on a dirt road.  Now it's only about three, but then it was pretty quiet around here.  Not to many poeple lived close to us.  Our best friends were our three cousins who lived about a quarter of a mile across the creek from us.  They were our ages.  Three girls.  The thing was we didn't hang with the girls who were our own age.  The oldest cousin Linda was best friends with the youngest of us, Delbra.  Wanda the sister next to me was friends with the youngest of them who was Sherry, and I was friends with Velma the middle one of them. 
We had a lot of good times playing back then.  I remember once we all went swimming in Feb.  It wasn't one of these 70% days like we sometimes have now.  It was cold.  Once across the creek was enough for us all.  We went one at a time because we only had one pair of shorts and a shirt.  We never even thought of going in without them.  We were far enough in the boonies that I am sure we would have been Ok, but we all wore that  set of clothes.  We had to put our hair up because we knew if we went home with our hair wet Mom would know what we did and would would be in trouble with a capital T. 
God surley was with us silly girls.  We didn't even get a cold. 
Times have passed and we are all grandmothers or about to be.  We don't see each other much anymore, but those loving times will always be there to keep us close in our thoughts and will always make it a joy to see each other when we can.