Rethinking Adolescence and Adulthood

This morning Woodpecker (an adolescent) made its first appearance here at the House of Light. What an honour. Woodpecker is an old friend who I’ve come to love as deeply as they’s (that’s a poetical for Friday) penetrating bill digs into tree trunks. How fascinating they choose a branch of supposedly dead Elder to perch and feed from. Woodpecker interrupted (always reframed as divine intervening since my life is perpetually subject to it) my morning musing on the noun ‘adult’ and the verb ‘adulterate’. Surely they are connected? Following Woodpecker’s lead, I dug in to extracting the treasure beneath Elder’s brittle surface which turned out to be extremely nourishing. Thank you tree with many roots – Etymonline. IN SHORT (Ha!) To become adult means to ripen. Following the mycelium of words, it stems from the root ‘adolescence’. Adolescence has its roots in two parts: ‘ad’ = ‘to’ (any words prefixed ‘to’ and ‘ad’ I think of as meaning ‘towards’) ‘alescere’ – ‘be nourished’ We do not…