Grandma Ani, if you hear me, H-E-L-P!
By Anita Houk
commercialappeal.com , Tennessee
Aug 21 2005
First, Araxee Ross didn’t even want to meet Kristian Moxley.
She was a University of Memphis sophomore with deep roots in the city
and a keen interest in having fun.
He was an ex-Marine, a Texan new to the city, a world traveler with
little direction.
But once Kristian heard of Araxee through a mutual friend, “I kept
pressuring him: ‘Can you give me her phone number?’ I was at his mercy;
so, I’d just show up wherever she might be. There was no real first
date. Just meeting.”
“Going out with friends,” she explains.
Until New Year’s Eve 2000, their first outing-for-two.
Their romance advanced steadily. “I knew what I was looking for and
how she fit in with that picture.”
Soon, however, he realized it might not be easy convincing this
Southern belle.
“Armenian belle!” she declares. “You know My Big Fat Greek Wedding?
That’s my family, but Armenian. And my family didn’t like him.”
Kristian didn’t have big life plans yet. He hadn’t finished college.
Her folks didn’t approve.
“I was under a lot of stress when we first started dating,” she says.
“If my parents didn’t like the guy, I would normally just break up
with him. So I went to break up with Kristian, and he said, ‘What do
you really want?’ ‘I want to date you.’
“So I decided we were still going to date and my parents, well,
eventually they had to see who you really were.”
Did her folks need an errand run? Kristian would volunteer. The yard
raked? He’d sweat.
“I had to convince them. I’d do anything they asked.”
But they remained unswayed. Araxee was so concerned she reached out
to the netherworld.
“My mom always told us that my Grandma Ani (Anitza Keshishian)
was always looking after us,” Araxee says. “One day, when all the
struggle over my family not liking Kristian seemed endless, I took a
picture of him and a little ceramic angel to my grandma’s grave site.
I didn’t tell a soul.
“I said a little prayer, showed her a picture of Kristian and said,
‘Grandma, I really love this boy.’ I asked her to watch over our
relationship and if it was meant to be, to help us out.”
Kristian got a plan: In addition to working, he signed up for
college. He’s majoring in accounting, planning to be a certified
public accountant.
Then, he got up his nerve.
“He had to talk with my mom.” He wanted Araxee to come; she refused.
“My mom,” Araxee says, “is the tough one in the family. She’s the
one all the boyfriends are always scared of. She’s Armenian. My dad
is from upstate New York, Swedish background. But he was kind of in
on it, too!”
“A joint venture,” says Kristian — all smiles now.
He went alone. “We sat down for a couple hours: What were my intentions
for her daughter, and how precious she is to her, and how much she
means to her parents. I knew she’s not going to give me any slack.”
And now?
“They love him, LOVE him,” says Araxee, who has graduated college and
is working at the Assisi Foundation and on her master’s in education.
“Her family is wonderful,” he said. She elaborates: “My family is
very protective. They know everything that everyone in the family is
doing. Everyone is involved in your life.”
So the party was huge after Kristian, 29, and Araxee, 25, wed at
First Baptist Church Caudill Chapel on June 25.
“The night before we got married, I started to cry,” says Araxee,
“because I was reminded of the day I had prayed to my grandma.”
When Araxee explained her tears to her mother, “she said that my
grandma was always one for true love.”
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