"To have this to come back to"

It's my last night at home for the summer. I'm ready to head back to Harrisonburg - I miss my community there, and I miss the environment of the academic world. But it is always hard to end things, and equally hard to begin. 

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I re-read The Wind in the Willows this summer and was blown away by this passage. When I read it back in July I thought oh, yes, this is how it is. This is always how it feels when I leave home. 

The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple--how narrow, even--it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. 

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Like Mole, I don't want to abandon my new life with its splendid emotional and intellectual spaciousness. At the same time, I value my familiar 'anchorage.' It is easier to leave when I know I have this to come back to - this place which is all my own, this home that can always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.