Sunrise is a gift to me, it is different every day of my life, and I am  rewarded every time I go and see it. Maria was having her period, she told me, and she made some crack about blood. What I thought was well, no sex for a few days.

So I was thinking about women and their periods this morning, something I have never written about but often wondered about and rarely talked about.

Like many men, I was raised to think of menstruating as something that was dirty, a kind of taboo, a secret. Never once in my life did I hear any member of my family, male or female,  mention it. Once I came across some tampons in the bathroom wastebasket and I asked my father what they were.

They were none of my business, my father said. They were something about women and their bodies that I should never mention again or refer to. It wasn’t something men talked about.

In my first marriage, which lasted 35 years, it never came up either, not once.

I had the vague idea that once a month, women had their periods and it was messy and sometimes painful and not something I should speak about so I didn’t. The tampons I came across once in a while did not seem appealing.

Every now and then, boys would refer to it, so would older men, but always in a vaguely disgusted or unnerved way. Men often joke about how periods affect women and their moods. It is common for men to say women are having periods if they are upset or emotional or angry.

It was certainly never mentioned as something that could be beautiful or celebrated.

Maria and i do talk about her periods, we don’t hide the subject, but I never bring it up, and she often refers to it as something uncomfortable, something to be endured or suffered.

This morning, she came from meeting with a friend and she walked into my study, and she said she had this revelation, it was interesting and important (this is one of the things I love about her). She told her friend that she was having her period in a sort of oh-when-will-this-be-over way.  A lament or intrusion.

Her friend surprised her by saying how great it was that she was having a period, how wonderful it was.

Nothing was closer to life and the earth and fertility that having a period, she said, and it was one of those powerful things about being female that other people, mostly men, had turned into something else.

Are periods ever mentioned in school, or in movies or most books or TV shoes? Are they ever discussed among friends or at dinner tables?

I told Maria that in my experience of living with her, it seemed that women often had to unlearn so many of the things they had been taught. So did men, a different story.

I love the idea of women and periods, I know it can be uncomfortable, even painful, and I would be reluctant to romanticize it. But the idea of being fertile, of giving life, is a sacred thing to me, and not something to be hidden.

Much of Maria’s life, and the lives of so many of the women I have come to know, is about learning to see themselves in a different way than our society sees them, or teaches men to see them. I call it the education of unlearning. It is often more revealing than learning itself.

I believe many men are terrified of women and their periods, and that they are also terrified of women who have been trapped in the dogma of others (as Steve Jobs would say), and are living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions and values drown your own inner voice, he said.

Women have unnerved men farther by creating their own movement and demanding that they  be seen in a different way. For many men, this is the end of life as they have known and understood it, just look at Congress.

But something that is painful or difficult – or even unappetizing – does not make it dirty or unmentionable or an unwelcome intrusion. Without periods, there would be no life, none of us would be here to read this. I have no trouble embracing that.

I think the way many men – and many women – have come to see the miracle of the period  is the result of other people’s dogma, other people’s thinking. Maria was much struck by what her friend said, and she was eager to tell me that this was a completely new and important way of looking at one of the most powerful personal elements in a woman’s life.

She said she wanted to write about, so I knew I had to write about it, also. She said that was fine.

As a man, this is not a club I can join, or  define.I can’t tell women how to think about anything.  Perhaps when women relearn the power of the period, men will inevitably come to see it differently as well.

Maria surprised me this morning, a morning I was already thinking about this subject.

She opened  my eyes also to the way in which I have been taught to look at women and their periods. This may have been one of the first conversations about periods I have ever had with a woman I love and live with. I can’t recall another.

My daughter and I have never once discussed it.

I’m grateful to be alive, and if women didn’t have their periods, I wouldn’t be.

If Maria chooses to undertake some re-learning, I will also.

I can’t speak for other men, but I have work to do here, I know the conversation lit me up, it felt liberating and joyful. A good start.