Friend #26 - Mitch

Do you affect the world?  Or does the world affect you?

Last Saturday, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Arizona hosted a LGBTQ Awareness seminar.  Since I’m a Big Sister, I was invited.  I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but when I arrived, the majority of the attendees were men. 

At the very beginning of the seminar, a man behind me asked, “Isn’t this all just a choice?”  I could immediately feel tensions rise around the room like an earthquake.  The facilitators and the audience had a lot to say, but there was one man at the far end of the table where I was sitting who calmly waited until everyone else said their peace. 

When finally he was called on to speak, he turned to the man behind me and said, “I am biracial.  So in school when they passed out forms for you to check a box beside your ethnicity, I could neither check the box that said ‘white’ nor the box that said ‘black’ without denying some part of myself.  These people are just asking for a box to check.  That’s all.  It doesn’t matter whether you understand it or not.  Just give them a box.”  Boom.  The matter was settled.

And that’s how I met Mitch.

His parents met in 1977 while working in an assisted living facility in Compton, California and while there was a lot of love, it wasn’t an easy childhood.  Mitch remembers a road trip his family took to see family in Louisiana.  As they drove through Texas, Mitch’s father had his wife lie all the way back in the passenger seat with a coat covering her face because in those days if a black man was caught with a white woman in certain parts of Texas, the man was beaten and the woman was raped.  Even Mitch’s best friends in Compton sometimes called him “honky”.  And there were lots of instances when Mitch felt like he didn’t fit anywhere.  In those days there were no boxes for him.  It could have made a lesser person bitter.

But when Mitch was twenty, he bought his first house and as soon as he moved in, he discovered there was a water leak under the foundation.  The company that came out to assess the damage told him it was going to cost three thousand dollars to fix it.  That was three thousand dollars that Mitch didn’t have.  He immediately went into his bedroom and cried.  And then he got up, went out to rent a jackhammer, dug up the foundation and taught himself how to lay the pipe.  When it was done, he knew there was nothing in his life he couldn’t do.  And he’s lived that way ever since.

Mitch is 6’3”, bald, with tattoos and piercings.  On the outside, he looks like an intimidating dude but on the inside, he’s kind, respectful, and self aware with a quiet confidence that commands the room.  Kids and animals gravitate towards him.  He’s slow to anger but when he does it’s scathing. 

Once, one of his employees did something stupid at work and he lost his temper.  He stormed back to his office, realized what he had done and asked his assistant manager to bring the employee in.  The employee, scared he was about to lose his job, immediately began gushing an apology.  Mitch held up his hand and said, “Stop.  You have nothing to apologize for.  You made a mistake but I’m the one that owes you the apology.  I shouldn’t have lost my temper and called you out amidst your peers.”

And that’s the take control kind of guy he is.  He’s a gun enthusiast but not because he wants to maim.  It’s the ability to control something out of control that is the draw for him.  If life were the ocean and the waves were insecurity, fear, indecision and anger, how many of us would have the strength to stand steadfast instead of being swept off our feet?  Yet that’s the type of man Mitch is.  He lives his life with quiet strength and when the waves grow strong, he finds a way to hold the them back for both himself and the people he loves.