Best Friend’s Birthday (January 27, 2026)
Today is my last full day in Sydney, Australia, but more importantly, it’s my best friend’s birthday. They say if you find even one friend in this lifetime, you are blessed. I was lucky enough to find James Graeber in 2nd grade and 47 years later, we remain close despite living a minimum of 3,000 miles away from each other.
James Graeber was born on January 27, 1972
If you’ve heard me talk about James in the past, you know that in 2nd grade, we made a pact. “If we’re still best friends when we get married, I’d like you to be my best man at my wedding.” At 7 years old, we were already thinking about our collective futures and roughly 20 years later, that promise became a reality. James was my best man at my wedding and I was his best man.
Going on a hike: Violet, Jennifer, James and Calista
Throughout my life, there are several times that I thought our friendship would diminish. At 9th grade, I went to Santa Rosa Junior High School when James entered Cardinal Newman. Despite going to different High Schools, we spent a lot of time together once we had our drivers licences (me on my motorcycle and James in his ‘66 Dodge Charger). Then, I thought for sure we’d drift when he went to UC Davis and I moved to Massachusetts to attend Salem State College.
That was the true test of our friendship. 3,000 miles away, we managed to stay connected on the phone and meet up during the holidays when I’d fly back to visit my parents.
Marriage, kids, and through it all, we continued to build our friendship. When Violet attempted suicide last year, he was the first friend I called to tell him. James has always been the best listener I know and he’s always there for me when I need him.
I was surprised to see how few pictures I have of James on this MacBook Air I’m traveling the world with. The last time I took a ton of pictures with James was when I visited California with Violet and we all went on a hike through the old art caves. This was an abandoned rail track that artists have since taken over and created some incredible artwork.
James is retired now and is spending his time as a winemaker and vintner. After a 30+ year career at Intel, he continues to grow his engineering mind and talents, now in the wine industry. For fun, he builds robots like a fully functioning R2D2 unit.
James built this from scratch. It “talks”, moves and is great at parties
And so, today, I’m taking this moment to reflect on how blessed my life is because I have James in my life. My mom has adopted him as my “older” brother. Born in the same year, we’re 10 months apart. We both hated how close our birthdays were to the Christmas holidays as some of our relatives would lazily give us “Merry Birthday” presents as kids and that sucked.
Later in life, however, we would wish each other “Merry Birthday” and even combine gifts on purpose to give a 2x better gift than we could have afforded as we were just setting up our independent lives.
So thank you, James, for being such an incredible friend all these years. My life is better with you in it. From the joys to the sorrows, you simply make life better and I’m so lucky to have you as my friend.
