"I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression. Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife..."

"... and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.... I have to say, that waking up to the news, waking up to how this administration has or has not responded, waking up to, yet another, story of a Black man or a Black person somehow being dehumanised, or hurt or killed, or, falsely accused of something, it is exhausting. And, and it, it has led to a weight, that I haven’t felt in my life, in, in a while.... Barack’s in his office, making calls, working on his book. I’m in my room, the girls are on their computers. But right around five o’clock, everybody comes out of their nooks, and, we like, do an activity, like, puzzles have become big, just just sitting and doing these thousand piece puzzles.... So Barack has taught the girls [the card game] spades, so now there’s this vicious competition.... It’s almost like they needed the world to stop a little bit. You know they didn’t realise that they were, that the world they were on, and the way they were living it, was so treadmill-like. So fast and furious. Um, because it was all they ever knew.... [The pandemic is an opportunity to] decide how you want to show up in the new world. Because it will be a new world."

Said Michelle Obama, in her podcast, quoted at The Guardian.

I wonder if Michelle Obama suffers from the medical condition, depression. I hear "some form of low-grade depression" to mean that she feels low or sad based on the current conditions, not that she has clinical depression. But perhaps she does, and I would hope that people who suffer from depression feel supported by her words.

As for the Obamas, under lockdown, doing puzzles at the end of the day — I imagine that millions of people, reading about that, feel uplift just to picture the beloved family around a table in the evening  laughing and talking over a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I am not kidding when I say that typing out that sentence brought tears to my eyes. What is more wholesome than a married couple with their adult children working on a complicated puzzle together? Such a beautiful life, and yet they still think of the troubles of the world and carry that weight along with them.

What puzzles do you imagine them doing? Maybe Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Edward Gorey's "Cat Fancy" or this William Morris tapestry. That's what the Obamas in my evening fantasy are doing, and if someone made a puzzle out of an intricately detailed painting of the Obamas doing a puzzle, I would do that puzzle and so would millions of Americans. It might cure low-grade depression.

And here are the rules for the card game spades. Key rule: "The spade suit is always trump."

ADDED: "There's a tramp sittin' on my doorstep/Tryin' to waste his time/With his methylated sandwich/He's a walking clothesline/And here comes the bishop's daughter/On the other side/She looks a trifle jealous/She's been an outcast all her life/Me, I'm waiting so patiently/Lying on the floor/I'm just trying to do my jig-saw puzzle/Before it rains anymore...."