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When I was in grade school and I wanted to tell someone that I valued their friendship, I would make them a friendship bracelet.

“Best Friends Forever,” it meant.

Back then, forever maybe lasted until the end of the school year, and by the time next September rolled around, both the bracelets and the bond had faded in the summer sun. New friendships would soon be forged. There weren’t hard feelings, as far as I can remember. That was just the way things went.

Over the years, I’ve had a few “best friends.”

There was Katie, the Southern Baptist. On the weekends, we would drive around in her white Jeep with her white dog and camp in the woods. We dreamed a lot as the Georgia landscape whizzed by in blurs of green and gold, and folk music played on the radio.

And there was Leslie. She had been so much fun. She’d made the best chocolate chip cookies I had ever tasted. We would listen to meatloaf and David Bowie, and one time, we went skinny dipping in her parents pool, when they were out of town.

And there was Alyson and Ashley, Erin, Courtney 1 and Courtney 2 (though those were many years apart) and quite a few more. All of them were the most important friend in my life at one time. They were a partner in crime, a companion with which to get into trouble, someone to grow with and learn with and share my secrets with — someone to go to the mall with.

I love them all still, just as much as I did then, but for one reason or another, I find myself very much without a best friend these days. I know we grow up and grow out of our need for that schoolyard bond, to a certain extent, but why?

I’m married now, with a house and a dog and a little baby, and I don’t much talk to my girlfriends, with the exception of an email here and there. It’s not for lack of desire, but life is just different, now; busy, we’re all so busy.

Of course I have such a great little domestic bliss thing going for me, but I still think of my trip to Mexico with Erin. We drank so much tequila that we almost didn’t make it back to our cruise ship before it pulled out of the port. We played volleyball on the beach with some co-eds and ate at every food cart we passed. Erin bought a hammock from a man who stopped her on the corner. I wonder if it’s hanging in her apartment now.

Whether the era  for “best friends” is behind me, or there is still time for skinny dipping and martinis and cookie dough ice cream, I am not sure, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever rekindle a bond with any of my “BFFs,” but I do know that I will always have some of the best years of their lives, and they’ll have some of the best of mine; no bracelets necessary.

Dayna Copeland is a writer and a publisher in Denver, Colo. She hikes, camps, cooks and pretends to play guitar for her family and friends.