home sweet and bitter

“Home is where the heart is.” It’s a catchy slogan for a doormat, but home and heart are not so easily pinned down.
My new home is familiar. There is comfort in familiarity, a comfort in the familiar faces of the neighbors you walk by every morning, a comfort in knowing the names of the streets when giving directions. There is a comfort in having a coffee at a familiar café served by a familiar waiter.
My present familiar is what it must be like to have a summer home in a cooler place, or to winter in a warmer state. Seeing people when I return, they say things like, “It’s been so hot this summer,” and I feel simultaneously guilty and fortunate to have been somewhere else, another familiar.