by Nik Wallenda
As that curve sank even lower, the Wallendas faced fresh challenges. Fewer circuses were operating. Attendance was off. Money was sparse, but despite this Terry had embraced his wife’s family creed. He and Delilah would make this thing work—no matter what.
Delilah’s spirituality had a profound impact on Terry. Shortly after they married, he experienced an epiphany.
“It happened during a time when we were off the road,” he remembered. “In order to make ends meet I was working for my dad washing windows. I was high up on a scaffold when I felt something with a power of its own come over me. Words can’t explain it. I had been raised a Catholic, but never understood a church mass conducted entirely in Latin. I never had considered the Word of God, never really read it with anything approaching sincere concentration. But on this blazing hot afternoon, hanging fifteen stories above Sarasota, the sun in my face, I experienced what I’d have to describe as a miracle. I felt overwhelmed by a force that I can only describe as love. I found myself asking that source—whom I call God—into my life.”
“When I picked Terry up from work that day, I knew he was a changed man,” says Mom. “He had a smile on his face I had never seen before. He was radiant. Terry became a believer in a way that reinforced my own belief, studying the Bible and becoming not only a student of God’s Word, but a scholar. He now knows God’s Word as well as anyone I’ve ever met. Together we read David Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade, a book about the miraculous impact of Christ on the lives of young people lost in gangs. We saw the movie. We discussed it in Christian study groups. In this critical period before beginning our family, we committed ourselves to the Christian life.”
In 1977, Delilah gave birth to Lijana, my sister.
“It was beautiful to watch Karl respond to my daughter,” says Mom. “He was a doting great-grandfather. In an instant, he switched roles from being a stern performer where no one or nothing could get it his way, to a softie. I treasure a photograph where Lijana, barely a toddler, is standing up in the palm of Karl’s hand. He is teaching her balance. He just adored her.”
At age seventy-three, Karl kept on keeping on. Two years before, his son-in-law Chico, climbing up to assist Karl on the wire, brushed against a live high-voltage clamp and fell to his death—still another tragedy to which Karl bore witness.
Yet no tragedy could stop him. Nothing could deter him from his work on the wire.
“One of his closest friends was Evel Knievel,” says Dad. “The two men, bonded by their boldness, enjoyed a deep relationship. Neither knew the meaning of fear. And both had suffered a variety of mishaps. Both had persevered against overwhelming odds. You knew Evel was coming up the pathway to the house because you’d hear this loud clicking noise. This was the clicking from his broken bones. And yet, for all the pain, he was not a broken man. Neither was Karl. Until the very end, Karl stayed strong.”
In 1978, at age seventy-three, he came to perform in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was a hastily arranged engagement. His usual crew, back in Hawaii, was not able to do his rigging.
“Rigging,” says my mother, “was the one thing my grandfather was absolutely adamant about. If he taught me and Terry anything, it was to trust rigging to one group and one group alone—your own personally trained crew.”
Ticket sales to the circus event in Puerto Rico were drastically down. Always the go-getter, Karl decided to take matters in his own hands and stage a stunt to boost sales. He would walk 121 feet between the two ten-story towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel 121 feet above the pavement. In his long life, in a hundred countries and on five continents, he had done thousands upon thousands of such walks. His advanced age, his arthritis, and his double hernia were all challenges, but Karl Wallenda had faced challenges far more imposing. The San Juan walk was neither unusual nor especially spectacular. It was a mere publicity stunt to be covered live by the media.
My mother, back home in Sarasota, was recovering from a miscarriage, my dad by her side, when the phone rang. A frantic relative was telling them to turn on the television.
The scene was being replayed again and again.
Karl walked out on the wire. He was dressed in his usual white shirt and brown slacks. As always, he was composed. He was a man renowned for balance. No one has been steadier, no one was more experienced, no one could even begin to approach his remarkable list of accomplishments. From the start of his six-decade career, he had been Mr. Calm, Cool, and Collected.
But this time something went terribly awry.
My folks’ hearts started beating wildly. They could barely breathe. They couldn’t believe their eyes. They saw that this man—their mentor, their teacher, the very paradigm of composure on the high wire, the great survivor of dozens of disasters—had lost his footing. He went to his knees. He grabbed the cable but couldn’t hold on.
He tumbled through the air, landed on the concrete, and died instantly.
The television commentators called it the fault of a thirty-mile-an-hour wind.
“It’s not the wind,” said my father. “It’s the rigging. I can see it from here. The rigging is wrong.”
On that day everything was wrong.
Karl Wallenda, the mighty family patriarch, had fallen.
4
A Kid in the Circus
Not only do most kids love the circus, millions of kids dream of being in the circus.
I’m a kid who doesn’t need to dream. I’m actually in the circus. Unaware of any heavy family dramas that haunt my mother or the financial fears that plague my dad, count me among the happiest kids in America.
Here’s how it works:
My grandfather, the dashing Alberto Zoppe, is thrilling the crowd with his daring bareback moves. He does pirouettes and cartwheels, handstands and backflips, all the while maintaining balance on the back of his white Arabian. He has the spectators in the palm of his hand. He approaches the crowd and asks for a volunteer. Everyone is reluctant. No one comes forward except this blond-haired little boy.
“Sure you’re not scared?” asks Zoppe.
“No, I’m not scared,” answers the kid.
Zoppe puts the kid behind him on the horse. As they go galloping off, the kid, his hands on Zoppe’s shoulders, stands up. The kid removes his right hand from Zoppe’s shoulder and waves to the crowd. The kid removes his left hand and does a little back flip. The crowd goes wild. For a few seconds, the kid is a star.
At the end of the stunt, Zoppe proudly introduces the kid as his grandson, Nikolas Wallenda.
I bow, hug my grandfather—who is one of my many marvelous teachers—and can’t wait for the next show so I can do it all over again.
I know that my grandmother Jenny and Zoppe are no longer husband and wife, but have no knowledge about their violent relationship. All I know is that my grandfather is putting me in his act. He showers me with attention—far more attention, I will later learn, than he ever directed toward his daughter Delilah.
I make another appearance at Sea World in San Diego. This time, rather than playing the part of a stooge in the audience, I’m stuffed into a pillowcase. A clown flings me over his shoulder and carries me into the arena. He does his floppy routine. His baggy pants fall down to reveal pink polka-dotted boxer shorts. When he squeezes his nose, it sounds like a fire alarm. As he climbs on a unicycle and circles the arena, doves fly out of his pockets. At the end of his bike ride, the crowd is thoroughly delighted. It’s time to bring their attention to the pillowcase. He reaches inside. The audience doesn’t know what to expect—a baby bear? A lion cub?
He takes me by the scruff of the neck and presents me to the crowd. I’m a pint-size duplicate of him. I have the same makeup on my face, the same fire-engine-red bulbous nose, the same pink polka-dotted boxer shorts. He acts shocked.
I mimic everything he does: He does a pratfall, I do a pratfall; he does a somersault, I do two somersaults; he gets on his unicycle and tries to escape me; I have a miniature unicycle of my own and chase him all
over the arena. He can’t escape me. I am his mini-me and the audience can’t get enough. When he stuffs me back in the pillowcase, I sneak back out. He doesn’t see me but the audience does. I stand behind him where I mimic his every move. The audience howls. Mistakenly, he thinks the cheers are for him until he turns around and sees how his tiny double is stealing the show. He chases me around the arena but winds up falling on his face. I do a series of smart back flips and take my bow.
For the next ten years or so, I’m a clown. I relish the role. I love the persona. It’s the foundation of my education as a performer. I couldn’t ask for a better preparation.
The first—and most wonderful—fact is this: Being a clown is fun. It’s not work. It’s play. It sets up my understanding of circus stunts in terms of sheer enjoyment. It’s a frolic, a romp, a game in which it’s okay to play the part of a sad sack and loser.
Early on, though, I realize that the clown is also the character who has one purpose—to win your heart. The audience marvels at the daring of the trapeze artist or the courage of the wild animal trainer walking into the lions’ cage, but it is the clown with whom they identify. That’s because the clown is aspirational.
“Aspirational” isn’t a word I know at age six, but I sure do have aspirations. That’s why I’m a successful clown. The clown aspires to be in the show and will do anything, including falling on his face, to gain acceptance. The clown may act a little sad because others—in their form-fitting costumes and fancy plumage—are more glamorous and perhaps earn more respect. But the clown transforms sadness into joy by not taking himself seriously. The clown creates joy by making fun of his aspirations. The clown elicits your love.
The clown is also mute. He speaks with his body. His gags are visual, not verbal, but that makes it easy for a kid like me. There are no lines to memorize; no jokes to recite. The jokes are in the broad body gestures that dramatize my various dilemmas.
I work, for example, with the Cairn terriers that are part of my parents’ troupe. I love these puppies. Clowns always need problems to solve, and the dogs provide me with a wealth of comical possibilities. I must get them to run through the hoops and leap over the little fences I’ve set up. One of the puppies runs astray and I must chase him down. When I do, another one falls out of line. The disorder continues. The crowd laughs at my efforts but also relates to my frustrations. At the end of my ordeal, I intentionally trip and land on my backside as all the puppies run over to lick my face before they run through the obstacle course. The kids in the audience love every minute of the act.
Kids are the easiest audience. Kids are also the purest audience. They are neither cynical nor critical. They are prepared to laugh. They want to be entertained on the simplest level. As a kid entertainer, I also have a pure heart. I want to do nothing more than delight the audience. This drive is inborn. My parents share the same drive—to please the people.
“They’ve worked hard, long hours all week long,” I hear my father explain. “Many of them don’t have it easy. They don’t have a lot of money, so when they decide to buy a ticket to see us perform it’s our job to make sure we give them a thrill. Same goes for the kids who’ve been cooped up in school. Everyone’s looking for a little escape, Nik, everyone’s looking to be amazed. It’s our job to amaze them.”
I love that job. It’s a serious job that, for a kid, doesn’t have to be serious at all. It just has to be about having fun and making sure everyone has fun along with me.
The serious part comes with my aspirations. Along with the audience, at every performance I watch my mom and dad. I marvel at their skills and yearn to do exactly what they’re doing. They set up wires, only a few feet off the ground, that allow me to do just that. They encourage my aspirations. I have a ball clowning around, but I’m dead serious when it comes to perfecting my balance in what others might see as perilous situations. This want—you might even call it a compulsion—for serious fun continues for the rest of my life.
Before they go out to perform, I study my parents.
My mother is a beautiful woman with a sweet smile. She wears a fitted costume, a sparkly spangled outfit that is the aerialist’s version of a one-piece bathing suit. My father is an imposing man in all respects. He has a muscular build, impressive upper-body strength, and a stoic demeanor. Together Mom and Dad are a handsome couple.
To my young eyes, they carry themselves with tremendous confidence. They display great showmanship and courage as they climb the ladder and walk the wire.
I see my sister following in their footsteps and have not the slightest doubt that I, too, will be joining them on high. It’s only a question of time. I’m bursting with energy. I’m filled with purpose.
I do not expect that anything can or will go wrong.
Fear isn’t a concept I understand. Fear isn’t a feeling I’ve encountered. Fear has nothing to do with the universe that, as an overactive clown kid, I inhabit.
5
A Kid Encounters Fear
I’m seven years old, sitting next to my sister at an airport in Puerto Rico. My parents are standing several feet away so we cannot hear their conversation. I know something’s terribly wrong, though, because tears are streaming down my mother’s face. Mom and Dad always try to keep strife and discord away from us, but, given the fact that we’re a close-knit traveling family troupe, that’s virtually impossible.
When they aren’t looking, I inch a little closer so I can hear them speaking.
“It’s impossible,” says my mother. “It’s useless. I can’t go on like this.”
“It’s a bad break,” my father agrees.
“All that work and the man stiffs us.”
“I should have decked him,” says my father.
“Thank God you didn’t. The children don’t need to see their father attacking a promoter.”
“The man belongs behind bars.”
“If only we had the money to hire a lawyer to put him behind bars,” says Mom.
“How much do we have left?”
Mom rummages around her purse and finds her wallet. She counts the bills.
“Eighty dollars,” she says.
“That’s all the money we have in the world?”
“That’s it.”
Dad shakes his head in disbelief.
“Unbelievable.”
“What are we going to do?” asks Mom in a voice filled with panic.
“I’m not sure,” my father answers. “The situation keeps getting worse and worse.”
“Well, at least our plane tickets are paid for.”
For a long time my dad stays silent before my mom says, “Terry, I’m afraid.”
“I understand, Delilah. Your fear is not unfounded.”
This is the moment when fear is introduced into my consciousness. The fear has nothing to do with falling from the wire. It has nothing to do with perilous stunts or wild circus animals. The fear has everything to do with money. In my parents’ faces I see the anxiety that comes with the most primal fear of all—Can we survive?
I hate that feeling of fear. I don’t want to know it. I don’t want to absorb it, but it enters my young understanding of the world. For the first time I learn that performing may not provide basic sustenance. This is a shock to me. I think of performing as the most wonderful thing in the world. How can performing not pay my parents enough money? They are great at what they do. Audiences love them. Crowds never fail to give them standing ovations. Shouldn’t they get paid lots of money for doing that? After all, very few people have those skills. I don’t understand how money can be a problem. I’ve spent time at the ticket booth where I’ve watched spectators hand over their cash. Where did all that money go? At least part of it has to be for my mother and father.
On the plane, I finally find the courage to voice my concern. I walk over to Dad, who’s sitting next to Mom.
“Do we have enough money?” I ask him.
“What do you mean?”
“Are we all out of
money?”
“Where’d you get that idea, Nik?”
“I saw Mom crying.”
Mom, who has overheard me, says, “I was tired, honey. That’s all. Everything is fine. Go back and sit with Lijana.”
I take my seat next to my sister and decide to ask her about the situation.
“Why don’t we have any money?”
“We have money,” she says. “It’s just that sometimes there’s less money to pay the performers.”
“Why?”
“Less people come to the shows.”
“Don’t they like the shows? I thought everyone likes the shows.”
“Well, some people like to stay home and watch television.”
“Our shows are better than television. Mom and Dad should get paid lots of money for putting on these shows.”
“Eat your peanuts,” says Lijana.
Back in Sarasota, after we unpack and rest up from the trip, I watch my father frantically make telephone call after call. He’s desperate.
“Nothing to worry about,” my mother assures me. She sees that I’ve picked up the worry vibe and does all she can to reassure me. But by now I have absorbed the emotional truth. I am aware that the danger does not come from any stunt that my folks practice in the backyard. The danger comes from the world itself. The world is not safe for performers like us because the world will not pay us enough to live.
From now on, I am aware of a new reality. Financial fear. The struggle to survive. The endless need to hustle up work.
At the same time I improve my skills on the wire. Every day I improve. Every day I practice. Every day I ask Mom and Dad to evaluate my progress. They are generous with their praise and exacting with their critiques. The older I get, the higher they raise the stakes—literally. The wire is always going up. Walking the wire becomes more comfortable for me than riding a bike. Soon, like my dad, I’m riding a bike across the wire.
