Mara recalls arduous 20-hour trip to be with her mom during pandemic

Mara Lopez

During these difficult times, I chose to stay near my family,” said actress Mara Lopez, adding that she opted to take a 20-hour flight to the United States just to be with her mom, Maria Isabel, when the government first ordered a lockdown in March.

“The original plan was that Mama would go home to Manila [after the latter got married in California in June last year]. She couldn’t, so I went to her instead, because no one could say for sure how long the lockdown would last,” Mara told Inquirer Entertainment via video chat on Facebook messenger.

She has a younger brother, Ken, “who lives with his girlfriend in Laguna.”

“For me, the hardest part was the process of me coming here (US). My trip had been too traumatic. I traveled from Manila to Guam, then to Honolulu, then to San Francisco. It took me 20 hours. I didn’t use the public bathroom. I didn’t eat or drink because I was too scared to take off my mask. They say it’s most dangerous when you’re in an enclosed area. You’re safer outdoors because the wind is blowing,” she explained.

Mara said her experience resulted in a mental breakdown. “I cried at the airport. I called my boyfriend and told him, ‘I don’t think I can do this alone.’ The travel was really a struggle for me, but I felt safer already when I arrived in California.”

Mara’s boyfriend Chandler Booth

Her London-based American boyfriend, Chandler Booth, would later follow Mara in the US.

“I felt more secure to be near my mom. My biggest issue with her was that, like me, she could never stay in one place at a given period of time. Instead of just me buying groceries, she would go, too, but with mask, shades, face shield and gloves. She would even wear a PPE,” said Mara. “And before we entered the house from the grocery shop, we would take off all our clothes.”

Living with her mom and stepdad, Jonathan Melrod, in Sebastopol, California, had been “the ideal setup,” described Mara. “Mama’s place is a big compound. Since we can’t immediately join them in the main house—we had to do self-quarantine because I came from the Philippines and Chandler, from London—they built a ‘bird house’ for us. It’s just a shelter and doesn’t have its own water and electricity. It felt like we were camping there,” she recalled.

“The hardest part for me was that I couldn’t hug Mama for two to three weeks, but at least I can just walk to their place whenever I miss her,” Mara added. “I’m sharing this with you because I want to emphasize the importance of self-isolation, especially since my mom and stepdad are both seniors and are considered high-risk individuals.”

Mara said she liked staying with her mom there because “life there is self-sustaining, which is how it should be. We don’t have poultry, but we have enough basil, lettuce and kale. So if we couldn’t go to the grocery, there was never an issue of us running out of food. We also have fruit-bearing plants. It was great because I’m a vegan.”

Seven weeks later, she and Chandler flew to Austin, Texas, to visit the latter’s family there. “It’s unfair to him if we don’t transfer because he lived with us in California for two months, and he flew all the way from London,” she explained. “Still, we don’t go out, even though there’s so much freedom [in Texas] that you’ll be shocked. It’s like there’s no pandemic here.”

To make sure she remains active, Mara said she would do yoga three times a week. “I also took a break from surfing because I can’t go to the ocean, and I shifted to wake boarding since my boyfriend’s family lives near Lake Austin.”

Mara said she and her mom can’t wait to return to Manila, but since they learned that some 40,000 overseas Filipino workers were expected to return to the country between May and June, “we decided against it because we didn’t want to join the influx of people coming home.”

While abroad, Mara said she has been “waiting for my next call” because there were a lot of projects that were put on hold. Before she left, she taped for “A Soldier’s Heart,” along with Alex Medina and Irma Adlawan. She’s also a cast member of Arbi Barbarona’s “The Highest Peak,” an entry in the 2020 Sinag Maynila Film Festival that got canceled in March.