I’m an eternal sucker for a good catchphrase. A good catchphrase can embody so much about a person in only several simple words and I find it fascinating. This brings me to the blog title. The “It’s Just Off the Blog” title is a riff on a favorite saying of my mom’s, which was, “It’s just off the trees.” Being the camping family that we were (and still are), we took many family trips over the years. Undoubtedly, the time would come where it would rain and anyone who has ever been camping will tell you… it straight up sucks! But, if you’re a mother of six, you never let a little thing like rain get you down. So, it could be pouring out and we’d be sitting in our pop-up Palomino playing a board game and pretending not to notice my brother abjectly cheating as we waited for the rain to stop. And almost like clockwork, when the complaints would reach a fever pitch or novelty of Monopoly in a camper wore off, Mom would always look out at the rain and say unfailingly, “Don’t worry, it’s just coming down off the trees now.” I could never honestly tell whether she was trying to convince herself or us. To this day, whenever it rains when we camp, me or one of my siblings will inevitably say, “It’s just off the trees” in honor of our mom who is no longer here to enjoy those moments that meant so much to her. “It’s just off the trees” embodies so much about who my mom was, even though at the time I had no idea that those five words, so effortlessly strung together by a woman who was simply attempting to make the best of things, would have such a profound effect on me. Those words are so much more now that I’ve had the life experience to understand just what it takes to keep a family happy and together. It’s learning to bear disappointments together. It’s coming together in the bad times or the annoying times or the stressful times and saying, ‘Hey ya know what, this may be crap, but at least we’re together!’ I don’t think my mom meant for her words to be that profound. It took me until I was an adult to see the unintended metaphor. Life gives you rain. And oftentimes, that rain is enough to ruin a whole lot. But if you’re lucky, there will be someone there to remind you with a well-timed catchphrase that a lot of good things can still happen in the midst of a passing storm. And, inevitably, the rain stops. And when it does, your happiness won’t be determined by the storm itself, but in how you weathered it. Do you accept it as part of life and then move on, or do you lament the injustice and decide the rain has ruined too much to ever find joy in the thing it ruined ever again? It’s a choice. We all make those little choices everyday, sometimes in small, annoying ways, and sometimes in life-altering ones that can redefine our lives. And yes, those lessons can all be contained in five small words that never knew their own significance when they were uttered. But that’s the thing about a good catchphrase. It always becomes an extension of the person who made it a thing to undoubtedly become so much more than it was ever intended to be. But most importantly, a catchphrase, from the frivolous to the profound, always embodies the simple expression of some of the most complex ideals. And the really good ones have the power to influence lives.
Elizabeth Banak Books 