Coming Home Can Be the Best Part of Going Away

I say this with trepidation. Lest you get starry-eyed for the home state apple of my eye.
Three winters ago, in Boston between big snowstorms, I was asked if I ever considered moving away. Retrospectively, it was a Big question, not a superficial query, but that's hindsight for you.
The city in which I live is growing at an astronomical rate that drove up the housing market, rent and makes it highly unusual to meet someone here who isn't from somewhere else.
I'm a rare breed, a native.
My city is a Best Place for sustainability, retirement, bicycling, parks system, livability, and a zillion more things that make people keep wanting to move here. We're still an outpost of affordability to those coming from other places. Of course several factors influence a big move, and in my case it is made even more complicated by having kids and they have a dad. So without having seriously considered it previously, my answer proved to be a simple as well as a definite No.
But then I started to think about it.
Why wouldn't I move? I like my city, I had visited others, but I had never been compelled to relocate for a job or a significant other or family. So I never went looking to improve my geographic relevance. I never questioned the weather's role as a governing character in my life charade. (I have a resounding memory of comprehending that people only talk about the weather if they are not clever enough to talk about anything else; however, as an adult I came to understand that where I live the weather is a defining factor in the blueprint of any day). Really, I like where I live. I like the moody weather and the spare golden months of the year when t-shirts are nearly sufficient enough in the evenings.
I don't love how the flood of transplanting citizens drives up the cost of living and the proliferation of part-time job opportunities replaces the full-time ones. I'm pretty disturbed that anyone finds it somewhat glorious that young people come here to retire. It's too easy to get distracted by all the work of each day to even notice why people keep coming here, moving here, and creating this expensive mayhem.
And yet.
No matter how much you like your home, getting away has a therapeutic value all its own. It's almost negligible where one goes, getting away. Because when you get away, you also get to come home. And coming home, no matter how many people have raced you there in your absence,  is often the best part of going away.