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She is contrails, and sand dunes, and sea salt, and star dust.

And in this particular moment, Mary Ellen Conrado is simply smiling, in spite of our predicament.

We’ve been traveling all day from Arizona, and now, with our plane arriving late into Minneapolis, we’ve missed our connection. It’s 10:30 p.m. so we’re stuck for the night. The hotels, as the uniformed, powerless people tell me, are all booked. And though I know Mary Ellen would make the best of it, asking her to spend the night on an airport floor seems absurd.

After all, she’s 89.

“We can solve this,” I say to her and the nearly empty airport terminal, thinking she needs to be bolstered, when in reality I’m the one who needs reassurance.

We are on our way to visit my mother, and Mary Ellen has sworn me to secrecy that she is along for the trip; it’s a surprise. She and my mom have a long history of porch sitting at sunset in Tucson with a steaming cup of my mom’s coffee in hand, or a cool drink. Now, they’ll get to do the same in northern Minnesota. But first, we have to get there and we have to get through this night.

Mary Ellen sits beside me on the airport bench, beatific. She has the enviable, hard-won serenity of a seasoned explorer.

She was born August 9, 1931 at 7 a.m. It was a Sunday, and the church bells were ringing as she entered this world. I know this because she has scrawled some of the details of her storied life in a tattered, spiral-bound notebook.

It’s clear Mary Ellen realized early on that she couldn’t bear to be ordinary. Though she shared many stories with me over the years, the notes she left behind have helped piece together many of the adventures she had during the course of her life that I didn’t know about. They range from childhood memories of a line of newly-washed clothes breaking off and falling into the dirt, to camping with her dad at Big Basin State Park. They also include her first shot of whiskey with her brother Jim, and her mother getting a black eye on V-J Day in 1945, the day which marked the end of World War II.

I met Mary Ellen long after all of these early life events, when she was already in her late 70s and my parents moved in across the street from her in a 55+ RV park in Tucson. She had the unique talent of being able to talk with anyone, which I think was made possible by the immense breadth of her life experience. So, she and my parents became fast friends. She and I, rather predictably, connected over a love of travel.

Some of her travels didn’t merit much mention in her notes. When she reminisced, her favorite travel memories included a six-week tour of Europe in “austerity class.” She collected stickers along the way which indicate stops in Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Assisi, Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Innsbruck, Lichtenstein, and beyond—she must have been in near-constant motion. I like to think of her in her 20s, seeing the world in that way. Sipping coffee at street side cafes, sleeping in quaint hotels, marveling as the world unfolds before her. She also spoke about cruising with her sister Cecilia, including the lavish treat of a Paul Gauguin luxury cruise.

The travels she spoke about most often were related to her years at sea. Mary Ellen took up sailing at the age of 52. Her nautical adventures started with a month aboard the Gazela, which sailed from Quebec to Philadelphia. She must have liked the experience, because after about six weeks on dry land, she took to the Star of India for a day and then joined the volunteer crew for the Elissa. It is an 1877 tall ship that was saved from the scrapyard in Piraeus Harbor, Greece, and brought to Galveston, Texas for restoration. Today that same ship is a National Historic Landmark which draws more than 40,000 visitors each year.

But from October of 1983 to November of 1987, Mary Ellen and the rest of the volunteer crew restored, maintained and sailed the Elissa. The longest journey onboard the Elissa took them round trip from Galveston to New York City, via the Bermuda Triangle. The 71-day, 5,500-mile journey was in honor of Liberty Weekend, a celebration of the centenary of the Statue of Liberty. Operation Sail 1986, as it was known, involved the largest flotilla of tall ships in modern history, and of course, Mary Ellen was there.

She continued to work on ships, sometimes earning $250 for a month’s work, but often as a volunteer. Her sailing experience included stints on various vessels and schooners: the Ernestina, the Spirit of Massachusetts, the Amorina, the William H. Albury, the Harvey Gamage, the H.M.S. Rose, and the USCG Barque Eagle.

In total, Mary Ellen sailed for a decade, with 1,273 days at sea, plus 874 days as a deckhand/docksides, providing maintenance and restoration. Trips included more of the world than most people see in their lifetimes: sailing the Gulf of Mexico, New England coastal waters, Key West and Miami, Dominican Republic, Australia, Singapore, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Aden, Suez, Rhodes, the Virgin Islands to Glouster via Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Nova Scotia, Savannah, and more. Her longest stretch at sea was 185 days, and her longest trip was 9,385 nautical miles. She noted 12-hour days on many of these journeys; not bad for a lady in her 50s.

Her midlife journey netted her just under 50,000 nautical miles. One of my favorite stories of those she told me was about crew life. She’d been showering, and much to her delight, one of the handsome young men on board stripped down and cheekily climbed into the shower with her.

I think I met Mary Ellen at the perfect stage of life, right as I round the age where women in our culture lose the scant social and political purchase we’ve worked hard to gain throughout our lives. It’s ideal timing, really, because Mary Ellen, just by being Mary Ellen, disproved the premise that women age out of their worth. In fact, she proved we can do extraordinary things in every decade of life.

If you’re 20-something, you can have dinner with the captain onboard his destroyer in Hawaii. And you can take a six-week tour of Europe in austerity class, and try your hand at fishing in Monaco, as Mary Ellen did.

If you’re 30-something, you can work as an elevator operator, and through the course of your work, travel the equivalent of 1 1/2 times around the world in the lift. You can also use these years to earn your pilot’s license.

If you’re 40-something, you can start a business, like ME’s Multiple Energetic Services, and do “almost anything,” as she did. Notary, car registrations, courthouse record searches, executive car cleaning and painting home interiors; she did it all. Then, and only then, on the cusp of 50, will you hit your stride. Some will start contemplating retirement at this point, but that would be ridiculous as you have more than 40 years of living left to do.

If you’re 50-something, you can become a security officer and private investigator, conduct stakeouts in a 1966 red Mustang, and go by the nickname, “Dickless Tracy,” as Mary Ellen did. You can earn your PADI scuba diving open water certificate, even if you’re the last to finish the 20 laps, as Mary Ellen was. And you can take up sailing, and learn to restore and work as an able body seaman and deckhand aboard ships, even if everyone else is 20 years your junior. You can learn caulking, sail making and maintenance, splicing, tarring, rigging and down rigging. People magazine will do a full-page story on you, with a photo of you on the ropes of the ship, high above the deck, looking fearless and absolutely badass.

If you’re 60-something, you can backpack around Australia. You can get your concealed weapons permit, go on a 100-mile rafting trip up the Snake River, and serve as a host at the Kirkwood Ranch in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. You can become a full-time RVer, crossing the U.S. from North to South, and working with the Care-A-Vanners along the way, a volunteer program through Habitat for Humanity that builds houses for families in need. Maybe you’ll do this for five years, as Mary Ellen did.

If you’re 70-something, you might buy a little park model in Tucson. You can volunteer at the Pima Air & Space Museum full time, and when they finally let you graduate from sweeping floors, you can learn how to do fabric covering restoration on old war planes, a unique skill that preserves history for future generations.

If you’re 80- or 90-something, you can rocket past your planned retirement and amass 15,857 volunteer hours restoring planes. All told, you can cover three complete airplanes and canvas control surfaces on more than 40 airplanes. And you can talk to anyone about anything, and weasel your way into a seat at my dinner table in exchange for just a story or two about your amazing life.

At any age, you can do any of these things. You can do these things and more, things that you might scrawl in the margins of your life as Mary Ellen did, with no further explanation necessary: “nudist colony,” “one shot murphy,” “rum in all ports,” and “night in jail.” You can sail the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands, and the Bermuda Triangle twice, because you were never meant to be still for long. You can survive a 3rd floor earthquake and an appendectomy. You can scuba dive, and get your pilot’s license and inadvertently bounce a plane—bending its propeller, and walk away as Mary Ellen did. You can get buzzed by jets, as you watch through the flapping canvas sails of an old ship. You can survive broken bows, broken masts, a dry dock shipwreck, and a 15 foot fall out of a rig, hitting the deck flat. And you can swim in the deep, blue Atlantic, far offshore. You can do this while being a woman. You can do this without being rich. You can do this while being seemingly ordinary.

More importantly, you can do all this while being a good person, like Mary Ellen. She lived life well, but lived life simply. Her humble park model had a bum air conditioner, an oven that she used to store wine, and a million memories and trinkets that she’d gathered in her adventures throughout her life. After her brother, Paul passed away, she said to me that he had been very generous with her in his will. And so, of course, Mary Ellen chose to be generous as well. I learned that Mary Ellen took a big chunk of that money, which she could have used in myriad ways, and gave it to an orphanage in Mexico. Of course, this never made it into her notes.

As her 90th birthday approached, Mary Ellen asked a favor of me. “I don’t have anyone to celebrate with,” she said, “would you throw me a party?”

And how could we resist? To host her on her 90th birthday was a gift to us, not her. We pledged to make her favorite foods, and she had some specific requests: ribeye steak, baked potato with butter, boiled artichoke with mayonnaise, and a lemon meringue pie. As a surprise, and with help from Julia Child, BackpackMr and I made a dish she’d had once that she had been dreaming of having again. I’ll never forget the lilt of disbelief in her voice when she read our hand-written menu aloud: “Lobster thermidor!”

Even as her heart began to grow weary, Mary Ellen never gave up. Three cardiac stents and a carotid stent kept that precious, powerful heart beating for more than two extra years. After that point, I believe she had just loved too much, her heart simply couldn’t hold any more love for this world and its people. And so, it was time to go.

Shortly before she passed, she told me about the sense of wonder she had experienced at seeing a newborn baby in church. “Just imagine,” she said, “being a baby, and seeing everything for the first time.” Being a devout Catholic, I know it isn’t likely what she believed, but I can’t help but hope she gets another go around, that she gets to see the world through those new eyes. Seems to me, if you live life that well, you should get another chance to enjoy it.

Tennyson wrote, “I am a part of all that I have met.” I like to think as travelers what we meet in this world becomes a part of us too, part of our cells and our lifeforce. I like to think it informs our choices, reshapes our worldview, brings clarity and a deep sense of knowing how precious our world is and how short our time is here, just a blip on the chronology of the universe. I like to think it inspires and empowers us to do the very best we can with this life, for ourselves, for our loved ones and for the collective good. Mary Ellen dove, and she sailed, and she built, and she healed, and she flew. She was contrails and sand dunes and sea salt and star dust.

Mary Ellen Conrado lived the life extraordinary. And that seems a perfectly lovely thing to aspire to do.

Next year I’ll be 52. How about you?

And most importantly, what will we do?

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