The grid of worry

The grid of worry is the narrator’s mental image for holding concern about Nic without letting it overwhelm him. Borrowing the method Chuck Close used to make large portraits from small squares, the narrator makes worry something he can approach a little at a time: it remains part of his life, but no longer fills the whole picture.

Definition and Method

The image begins with Chuck Close’s remark, "I get overwhelmed by the whole." Close responded to that feeling by breaking an image into a grid of small, manageable squares and painting them one at a time until they formed wall-sized portraits. The narrator recognizes a similar danger in his own worry about Nic and adapts the grid as a way to contain it.

In the imagined picture of his life, Nic occupies a square or two. The narrator checks in on those squares once in a while. Concern and other emotions are still there when he does, but they no longer overwhelm him. The method does not erase worry; it gives it a scale and a place.

Returning to the Grid

The image recurs during a quiet day surfing with friends at Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz. The waves are small, the water clear and warm, and the sets gently peel—conditions well suited to the children. Sitting on his board, the narrator surveys the grid inside his head until he reaches the squares where Nic resides. The setting sharpens the memory: father and son spent a great deal of time there together.

On the drive home, the narrator feels Nic’s absence and presence keenly as the family listens to Beck. The contrast between this ordinary family outing and the remembered time he spent surfing with Nic shows how the grid can hold attachment as well as apprehension. It gives the narrator a way to acknowledge what returns without allowing the feeling to take over the whole day.

Scale, Time, and Acceptance

The narrator’s worry has not vanished. He can still frighten himself by imagining what might happen to Nic five or ten years in the future, and he also thinks about Jasper Sheff and Daisy Sheff. But he is less consumed by those possibilities than before, and he has become better at taking things "one day at a time." When the future threatens to expand into an overwhelming whole, he returns his attention to today.

The grid’s significance lies in this balance: the narrator continues to hope Nic stays sober and to care about whether their relationship heals, while accepting that Nic is living his own life and that the relationship can heal only if and while Nic is sober. The image offers neither certainty about the future nor freedom from feeling. It makes room for concern within a life that is also being lived in the present.