Phil Bernstein Photo

During this time, we’ve focused on slowing down and investing time in learning and doing new things. One of my sons has taken up bread baking and learned how to make and score a delicious baguette. My other son is a painter who had to leave his canvases and paint behind at school. He switched from painting to drawing and made some elaborate drawings as class work. Both sons collaborated to make a hand carved wooden chess set and a wooden bird feeder as well. I’ve been sewing and donating face masks in my spare time and my husband made a batch of beer.

As a family, we started seeds indoors and watched and waited for them to sprout and for the weather to warm up. We’ve always had a garden, but this year, our focus was growing vegetables and have peas, beets, carrots, edamame, spinach and tomatoes in the backyard.

We’re all deeply saddened by the destabilizing influence that COVID has had on families here in Brookline and have donated to the Brookline Community Fund’s Safety net.

We are doing our best to enjoy life under covid conditions: working from home (Lynn), gardening (Louie), cooking (both of us), walking, and zooming with family and friends. Our favorite times involve sitting on our front porch playing Scrabble, reading, listening to the radio, and chatting with the lovely neighbors who walk by, most of which we've loved doing for the 40 years we've been in this house.

During the shelter in place, our family has been balancing working and homeschooling! I’m a scientist at the Wyss Institute, and a lot of our work has shifted to COVID-19 based research. My specific projects focus on developing COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics (https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/soup-to-nuts/
https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/wyss-designed-swabs-enter-human-trials-for-covid-19/?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=87032617&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8sPFIK1aVKgqaCAJUp1Jk5R5jl9ZyMVMiDkSrJ4CDiDizZmFlSN6PMZ7Co4jmoJqGeyQHrkk43O8KNLRFDC_sX-nRt8g&_hsmi=87032617). When we’re not working and schooling, our favorite family moments are spent outside for family hikes and doing work at our family’s (my brother-in-law’s) farm in Dover, MA.

The Brookline Food Pantry has seen a significant increase in usage, so we’ve been donating there!