A young college professor and her father only ever speak about the weather. Her father has a deep interest in meteorological forecasts and the two swap predictions and current states during their obligatory Sunday calls. For the professor, it serves as part of a coping mechanism against seasonal depression; if she knows how much sunlight she'll be getting during a particular day, she can do damage control and supplant it with bright, happy music to keep her mood up. However, one day her mother calls and tells her that her father has late-stage prostate cancer. The professor isn't sure how to process this. She breaks routine and calls her father on a Thursday, saying that she heard about his diagnosis. After a pause, her father returns to discussion of the weather, just like he did when she tried to tell him about her depression in sophomore year of undergrad. The professor is currently on a year-long fellowship to write a book about Ruskin's idea of the pathetic fallacy, but the fellowship has only given the professor time to lay around and binge television. After her call with her father, she does this for three days straight, and never moves from the couch. On Sunday, she revives herself to do damage control. She does jumping jacks for forty minutes and changes out of her pajamas.
The next day, her mother emails to say that they are driving to her father's first round of chemo; chemo meant only to stop the further spread of the cancer and blunt the pain. She calls her father and starts in on their routine discussion of the weather. He waits for her to give the forecast for her region as she thinks of the medical information about prostate cancer she'd surveyed that day, as she wonders how long he has. He prompts her, and asks if they're due for warmer weather. She thinks about how this is how the two of them communicate, and perhaps that is okay.