Last week, my husband and I took our kids to Mexico for a week. A friend of Wesley’s owns a vacation home there, and he had no sooner informed us that we could stay there any time we liked than I had booked tickets and begun arranging for passports.

This house was a revelation. Being entrenched Pacific Northwesterners, we are used to our buildings and houses being self-contained against the weather. Screens cover windows against insects, hallways are indoors so you don’t freeze to death whenever you leave a room, and outdoor pools spend most of the year covered by insulating bubbles so they don’t freeze over.

I didn’t realize how oppressive it is to live this way all the time without a break until we got to Mexico. The outdoor hallways, one of which is pictured above, threw us all for a loop at first but by the end of the second day they felt perfectly natural. Fresh breezes, vibrant flowers everywhere, and a view of the ocean from the terrace and pool.

Believe me when I say, it was as close to perfect as a real place can be.

After seven straight months of surgery and childcare, it was a balm. There was one afternoon where I spent four hours reading a book, drinking cocktails, and eating tortilla chips in a shaded cabana and I tell you this now with absolute honesty: I have watched with wonder while my kids were born, I have celebrated the publication of three of my books, and I have seen Carmen (the opera) live, but that was the absolute best four hours of my life.

You know what’s funny, though? Is how much work it took to relax those first few days. You’d think relaxing would be effortless, but the more tightly wound you are, the more intentional you have to be about unwinding.

After a massage at a swanky nearby spa, I selected a chaise surrounded by waterfalls on the spa’s private patio. A fellow American occupied the seat beside me, and when I sat down she sighed deeply and said, “I’ve been out here for an hour already. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

When I agreed, she collected her things and stood. “It’s our last day,” she said with regret. “I had probably better spend some more time looking at the ocean before we go.”

We parted ways, but what she said stuck with me. It’s interesting the pressures we put on ourselves to savor and really experience our vacations. For good reason, because who wants to spend their vacation in paradise glued to their phones inside their room? But still, I just don’t remember needing to try so hard to relax when I was a kid. When you’re a kid, vacation starts as soon as you leave your house.

Adults need a bit more discipline to truly savor their vacations, which seems like a contradiction but isn’t. It’s difficult to sit in silence on a patio. One’s fingers itch for the stimulation of a phone screen. But if you deny that impulse, and force yourself to stop and breathe and be, the reward is worth it.