I had a Darwin Day driftwood dream that still lives behind my eyelids.
I was in my parents’ family room. There were little holes in the ceiling and my mom had plugged them with a beautifully awkward piece of driftwood. It looked like a puzzle piece someone stole from the ocean. My first instinct was embarrassment. I wanted tidy symmetry, not nature’s sculpture overhead.
So I reached up to fix it.
I heard someone in the room tell me not to do it. I did anyway.
Ants rushed out like a marching band that did not wait for my cue. There was a rush and then a hum in my ears, the kind that comes with sudden panic. The room went from “minor ceiling issue” to “why did I touch anything, ever?”
And then I understood what the dream wanted from me.
I had to put the driftwood back exactly as it had been. Not approximately. Not “better.” Exactly. I lifted it, turned it, and found the angle. Click. It fit. The ants settled, as if the ceiling had been holding its breath, too.
Yesterday was February 12, Darwin’s birthday, and I spent part of the day at a Darwin Day work event with a keynote and quick flash talks about biology and evolution. So my brain was not being random. It was still humming with fruit fly stories, monkeys using tools, skull shapes and teeth placement changing the way we talk and eyeball metaphors when I fell asleep. Of course, a piece of driftwood wandered in to patch the ceiling and teach me about fit.
Imperfect solutions that already work
I woke at 2:56 a.m., thumb tapping notes into my phone in the dark. I could still feel the ceiling dust on my fingers and that twitchy urge to make things look right.
The driftwood was not a mistake. It was a working solution that only looked odd. I wanted a clean patch. What the situation needed was respect for the shape of the problem and the shape of the fix.
Sometimes the fix that looks strange is the only one shaped for the job.
Ceiling holes and ants
The holes felt like the kind of problems I pretend do not count.
A few emails. A few chores. A few things I can ignore as long as nobody looks too closely.
In the dream, the holes were not even the emergency. The driftwood was. It looked ridiculous. I wanted it gone.
So, of course, I touched it, and of course, the universe responded with a swarm of ants.
They were not evil. They were just… right on schedule. Like, “Hi, yes, you rang? You disrupted the system? We are here now.”
Instant shallow breathing. Instant jaw tension. And then, the moment the driftwood clicked back into place, my body remembered how to exhale.
The shape of help
Aligning the driftwood took care, not force. It asked me to notice. It asked me to meet reality where it is, not where my aesthetics would prefer it to be.
That felt like a family room lesson. The kind you learn under hand-me-down lamps with earbuds on the table and a laundry basket by the couch. Puzzles live at my parents’ place, not here, which is exactly why the dream set this in their house.
There was a steadying presence in the room, a voice that had told me not to pull the wood down in the first place. I ignored it, but it did not disappear when things went sideways. The help in the dream was quiet and nonjudgmental. It did not rescue me from the mess. It stayed while I made it right.
Compassion with accountability. I made the mess. I also fixed it.
No martyrdom. No self-abandonment. Just the right pressure in the right place and a nod to what works.
The laugh that reset the room
After the fix, I laughed until I cried. The laugh was not mockery. It was relief. It was my body unclenching. It was the nervous system equivalent of, “Okay. We survived. Everything is fine.”
The mystery voice in the room laughed too, and that sense of companionship, whether visible or not, mattered more than any perfect ceiling. My body understood something my mind sometimes forgets:
I can interrupt a pattern and then restore it. I can make a mistake and also make it right.
The afternoon in the dream drifted into calm activities. Sun through curtains. The rhythm of small chores. A snack plate that made sense, always cheese and crackers. One cheeky thought floated by: maybe the ants were just the building’s union telling me to respect the original contractor.
What it means this morning
Typing this now, I keep seeing my mom’s choice. She did not hide the oddness. She found a fit.
That feels like parenting. That feels like friendship. That feels like how I want to meet my own brain.
When something looks strange but works, maybe I practice gratitude before I reach for the step stool. Not everything has to make textbook sense; some things just work because they do.
And if I do reach and chaos spills out, I trust the muscle memory: notice, align, breathe. Then laugh, ideally with someone who cares. Then get on with the day.
Why this stuck with me
I woke up laughing at how ridiculous the dream was, but also feeling like my brain had handed me a small parable.
Sometimes the thing that looks wrong is the thing holding everything together. Sometimes fixing what is not broken creates the very problem you end up scrambling to solve. And sometimes the most adaptive move is not to impose a new solution, but to understand the shape of the one already in place.
If nothing else, my subconscious took Darwin Day very seriously. It just chose ants and driftwood as the delivery system.
