Circus music is no joke!

Circus music is hard to explain if you’ve never heard it.

It isn’t loud exactly. It’s constant. A steady hum of motion, need, love, interruption, joy, worry, laughter, logistics, and responsibility, all playing at once. It’s the background track of my life, and as a mom, it has followed me through every season.

These days, the tent is full.

I have three grown daughters. Two sons-in-law. One daughter-in-law. Grandbabies, Hudson, Maddie, Heidi, and Huck, each bringing their own rhythm into the song. Two dogs. Two cats. My momma, who lives with my husband Jimmy and me. Twin fifteen-year-old girls, Darby and Riley. A fourteen-year-old son, Jackson.

Every one of them is a note in the music.

The thing about circus music is that it doesn’t stop just because your kids grow up. It changes tempo. It shifts instruments. One moment it’s teenage schedules, rides, and teaching someone how to merge into traffic without panicking. The next, it’s adult children navigating marriages, careers, medical scares, hospital visits, late-night phone calls, and the quiet fear that comes with sitting in waiting rooms pretending you’re fine.

Layered through it all are traditions that never really end. Thirty-two years of Santa Claus mornings. Stockings filled before sunrise. Wrapping paper underfoot. Coffee gone cold while watching eyes light up, even as the faces around the tree change. Children grow. Grandchildren arrive. The magic shifts, but it never disappears.

Add in grandbabies who need comfort, snacks, bedtime routines, and reassurance that the world is safe, and the melody grows richer and louder.

There are days when the house is quiet and I almost don’t trust it. I’ve lived so long listening for the next sound, a door opening, a voice calling my name, a problem forming, that silence feels like something I should prepare for instead of enjoy.

Jimmy and I joke sometimes that we run a small village. But villages are built on care, and care takes energy. It takes presence. It takes showing up even when you’re tired, even when the music feels relentless.

And still, there is beauty in it.

The laughter of grandbabies. The way Darby and Riley learning independence one mile at a time behind the wheel. Jackson learns to move through the world with growing confidence. My momma’s stories woven into daily life. The comfort of knowing that when someone needs a place to land, our home is it.

Circus music isn’t chaos. It’s coordination. It’s love layered on love. It’s choosing, over and over, to stay under the tent because the people inside it matter.

Some days I dream of silence. Other days, I realize I would miss the music more than I ever expected.

For now, I listen. I breathe. I conduct when I have to. And on the rare quiet evening, I sit still long enough to notice that even the circus has moments between songs.