His Grace and Love in the Vine Life

It had been about two months since Ben had moved into her house and Tendai was still not used to his presence. His arrival had created a lot of problems in her schedule as he seemed determined to undermine everything she did with the children and disturb the perfectly messy timetable they had. Since she was dealing children, her timetable was never as strict and ordered as she would have liked but it was their timetable and she could usually handle any new changes, in fact, she anticipated most of them. His interference though was making life really hard for her. It was as if he had to be seen and had to be heard at all times and instead of looking for his own time to interact with the children, he seemed determined to infringe on hers. At first, Tendai had told herself to be patient with him but it had just gotten so ridiculous and being around him made her so mad she had ended up giving up her time with the children just to avoid being around him. His insistence on being difficul...

 Not to be outdone by the six-year-old, Tendai increased her efforts and tried to work faster to finish coloring in her own sketch. She was also very conscious of the fact that she would soon have to stop so that she could check on the meal she had cooking on the stove. The little girl, Rumbie, was super competitive and Tendai knew that if she even gave the child a chance, she would lose in this challenge of theirs. If she was to lose, Tendai knew she would never hear the end of it so she increased her efforts to do the best she could. There was a lot of pressure too because Rumbie's brother and sister, seven-year-old Tinotenda and nine-year-old Chipo, were both hovering over them, keeping watch over the showdown to make sure ‘no one’ cheated. That no one being obviously her because what would Rumbie know about cheating right? And yet part of her knew that there was a mischievousness in Rumbie that was to be watched out for. Age had nothing to do with it and Tendai knew tha...