The good ending to this story is that he and his mother reconciled in about March of 2018, and Zach has therefore re-established his relationship with his Mum and is happily a child who can once again, proudly boast that he has two homes.
The separation between mother and son happened after a decade of Zach living week about with his mother, and with me.
His mother was concerned about Zach's screen time and wanted her rules on screens to implemented in both homes. While I shared her concerns, I was happy dealing with the issue in my own way, and happy for her to deal with the issue in her home in her way. We agreed to disagree.
However, this led Zach's Mum to them present him with a hard choice: he was told he had to choose between living with her and spending every second weekend with me; or live with me and not see her.
Zach chose the latter. While it all seemed fairly amicable, I feared for the damage this might create in his relationship with his Mum.
One kind of funny thing that happened during this time was Zach spent a night over with a mate, and when he was being delivered back the next morning, the mother asked me outside to speak. She told me that the previous night, Zach had expressed a concern at the dinner table that she wanted to share with me. She said that Zach had expressed some concerns post-separation with his Mum, and in particular, had said, "Where am I going to live if my dad dies?"
She wanted to make sure I wasn't dying. I assured her I was not - or at least, not at any especially accelerated rate. We together decided there was little we could do -- or needed to do -- other than just watch and support him where we could.
After about a month, Zach's Mum started to call and text, told him she was missing him, and asked why he didn't come to see her. So he visited. And after some trial reconciliations over a period of about two to three months, Zach was able to establish how he wanted the relationship to be with his Mum. And in March of 2018, he began living week-about in his two homes again -- as it had been for the last decade or more.
Once the reconciliation was complete, I did feel a need to reassure Zach that if at any point, he found himself on the outside of his mother's home and/or favour, that he always had a home with me.
However, it proved to be a little awkward to explain.
I said "If you're not staying at your Mum's house, I want you to get in touch with me."
"Like when I go to stay at a friend's house?"
"No, if you happen to stop living at your Mum's house."
He raises a quizzical eyebrow at me.
I tried to explain: "I just want you to know you have a home in case of any disaster, just anticipating all possibilities."
He smiled: "That would be a bit hard with my Mum."
Hmm!
Happily, Zach has happily settled back into have two homes, one with each parent.
If anything is changing at this point, it is that Zach appears to be moving steadily towards dispensing with both parents.
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