Playing Dad

Dan Apeatu is a reformed alcoholic and a workaholic. He is an acknowledged trainer in leadership with a successful consultancy. His work is his life. Till his children, from whom he has been separated for twelve years, find him. He is willing to play his role as a father, which he understands to mean his paying their school fees and providing money for their other needs.



However, in his first real conversation with his daughter he discovers that the children want more from him than just providing for their needs. Life with their mother had been hell and the children were looking for a father and not just a provider. In the anguish of his daughter he discovered the image of a father - a friend, an older brother, a loving uncle, a confidant, a pillar of support, a 24 hour refuge, and a warm bosom in which they would be cradled if they must cry.



But Dan's life is filled with his work and he is not sure he can find space in the crowded schedule of his life for a wife and children. Without a wife he is not sure he can manage two teenage children when he had never learnt how to be a father.



Torn between a strong desire to give the children their due and an equally strong fear - almost certainty - that he would fail in his duties as a father, Dan reluctantly agrees to take time off for the children. It is the first step in a sometimes sweet, sometimes tearful process towards re-establishing a father and children relationship. As all three learn to re-establish the relationship the father finds that he gains more from the relationship than the children.