I'm thinking this will probably be the last personal essay I'll ever write, although, on the other hand, who knows?

     It will certainly be the last essay written by the literary persona I've come to know in my own mind as Dann O'Keefe. 

     And, now that I'm here, I don't know where to begin.

     Let's see... 

     Fifteen billion years ago, a supposed "Big Bang" filled what was, until that time, pure nothingness, so that...

     No, that's too early.

     Midway through the Fifteenth Century, Johannes Gutenberg converted a wine press into the first...

     No, that's too early, too.

     Let's start with this:

     I'm Irish.

     Growing up, my Dad's claim was that we were three quarters Irish. He knew he was 100%. He just wasn't sure about Mom. A point of contention between the two of them? So long ago. Different era. Late Fifties, early Sixties. No one talked about anything. An ancestry app gave my family the truth a few years ago: We're Irish. We're made up of nothing but what all Irish people are made of.

     As I understand it, in Ireland, writers don't have to pay taxes. (I've heard that for years. I'm going to have to look that up.) I find that fact fascinating, if true. It means that Ireland respects writers more than any other nation in the world. My need to write has burned in my blood for as long as I can remember, since before I even ​could write, and I believe being of the Irish race has something to do with that.

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