By John Murphy
I shouldn’t be in Highland, Calif. writing this. I should be at a hotel in Allen, Texas getting ready for the wedding of Felicia Lopez, my de facto daughter-in-law.
The Redlands High grad who goes by the nickname “Mafel” was supposed to get married today. In a snazzy hall in Plano that I visited a few months ago. Her fiance is the down-to-Earth Tenari Tenari, a polite young man from Long Beach she met nine years ago while both were studying computers at UC-Riverside.
But the COVID-19 crisis scuttled all that and will probably postpone things a year. It’s a small price to pay for everyone being healthy.
“Of course she’s sad but what can you do?” said Maria Lopez (Mafel’s mom) and my better half. “It’s nobody’s fault.”
Mafel and Tenari live in Allen, about two miles from the $60 million football stadium of the Allen Eagles, a Texas prep football powerhouse. Arizona Cardinals quarterback and Heiseman Trophy winner Kyler Murray was an Allen Eagle.
Mafel and Tenari have seen the Eagles live and I plan to at some point as well … whenever prep sports resumes, that is.
I asked Mafel via email what she’s been up to since she postponed the wedding three weeks ago due to COVID-19 concerns. She, like the fiancé, is working from home these days.
“Our house is definitely clean and organized due to extreme spring cleaning over the past few weeks,” she wrote. “Tenari is in deep with yard work. I have also been keeping myself busy exercising and walking the dogs every day. They love quarantine. I’m dreading the day we go back to the office, only because I don’t want to leave my dogs alone again.”
At least somebody is benefiting. I miss those dogs; not to mention Mafel and Tenari. But eventually a wedding will happen — and that’s not a party I’m going to miss.
Main Street Dog 