This morning I received a delivery at the restaurant with some of the first local summer strawberries. Of course, these days you can get strawberries year round, but the large imported ones you can buy in the winter pale in comparison to the sweet local variety that are starting to come in.

My mother likes to remind me that on the day I was born, her doctor showed up at the hospital quite drunk. Given that we were living in Ketchikan, Alaska, there was not anyone else who could fill in on short notice. Mom had to contend with an inebriated physician at the birth of her first child. For that, I think she deserves a glass of champagne on Sunday.

My globe-trotting daughter, Madeleine, is a television producer who spends almost the entire year on the road. She is usually heading right into the middle of the latest international disaster—wars, floods, bombings, assassinations—to get the story. I sometimes don’t know what country she is in, let alone when she will be back in Virginia. The springtime does provide me with a trick for ensuring a visit: morel mushrooms. Morels are Madeleine’s favorite food and one of mine as well. The local morels will be arriving in the next few weeks, and something tells me my daughter might not be far behind.