 She was yelling at me. Well, that was a very nice interview with her. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. That was like two hours. Yeah. Oh, by the way, this is Think Tech. Just want to clarify that. And it's Creative Contributions, which is our show about people who write books and do works of art. And our guest today is Sharon Hicks. She's an award-winning writer, and we're going to cover her book here, which was actually published in 2014. Am I right? 2012. 2012. Oh. And she is a recipient of the Outstanding Nonfiction Award for 2012 in Southern California Writers' Conference, published by Abbott Press Available on Amazon. It's a really interesting book. And the title, of course, can I read this on the air? How do you grab a naked lady? And I cut to the chase, and the answer at the very end of her book is, you don't. You don't grab a naked lady. You can try blankets, as the security people often did, but it doesn't work. Welcome to the show, Sharon. Oh, thank you, Jay. It's wonderful to be here. I appreciate it. Yeah. It's great that you wrote this book. I mean, it's a memoir, it's autobiographical, of course. It's got a lot of details about your life and the life of your mother and your father and brother and mother members of your family. And it's a statement of courage, it's a statement of candor. And my own view of it is that's why it's so popular. It's been selling hither and yon, and people, they can't resist it. They all say it's a great read, it's a quick read, it's a read that leaves you with a lot of lessons. And I can tell you that I had that experience myself. Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. So I guess, why don't you describe your own self? What this book is about, Sharon Hicks, Sharon L. Hicks, if you don't mind? This book is a memoir, but it's really a mother-daughter story. So when I was writing it, I was, Scott, this is, I had a huge manuscript, like 600 pages, but then I realized it was really a mother-daughter story growing up with my mother as a bipolar schizophrenic. And I always thought as a little girl that I was immune to that. My mother's sick, I'm perfect, I mean I was perfect. My dad called me little princess, I was homecoming queen at Roosevelt, I mean I'm perfect. I was also chosen most ideal of my class. I'm perfect, she's crazy. So I divided that up in my mind, and that's how I survived it, I think. And my dad was very strong. So when I was going to write this book, I thought, I'm just going to write her stories, because she had amazing stories. But Sharon, you've got to write a book. I said, okay. So I taped her, I sat down in the tape recorder, I sat down with her for, it might be five hours, I said, tell me your story, I had it all taped. And then I started to write, and I thought, wait a minute, this is really about us. It's not her, because I really can't get into her brain, but I could get into my brain when I write. So I wrote it from a daughter's perspective, instead of just writing her stories. So when I wrote it as a daughter's perspective, it changed on me. And at the end, I grew to love her like I never had before, and I grew to appreciate what she went through. Well, let me examine that, okay, because I like to drill down on so many things with you. So this was a bath of cold water for you to find that, A, she was not mentally, she had mental disease. And I remember when you first became aware of that, it's an interesting point in the book where they took her away one night after a party that was very tumultuous, and she appeared in negligee, as I remember, and made all kinds of raucous remarks, and they took her away, your father caused that to happen. And when you learned, when they told you that they had taken her away and that she was sick, and she had mental disease, you were elated to find out that she had a disease, because if she had a disease, then presumably with modern medicine, she would be cured. There was an answer. Right. There was an answer to her behavior. And I really got that. So the doctor told me he came as, well, nobody knew who he was. He came as a special guest. And when he came, and he took me next door, and he said, Sharon, your mother's going to scream, we're going to tie her down to a gurney, we're going to, all men are all being white, there's going to be an ambulance, and we're going to take her right off to Connealy. And I thought, oh my goodness, but then he said she's sick, she's going to a hospital. So as a ten-year-old, I got that, and it really made me feel better, that there was an answer. It struck me also that you're smart, and that you're a social person, and that you can have relationships, you're healthy in that sense. But it must have worried you over the years that what was happening to your mother, because she was getting worse, would happen to you. Did you have that concern? You know, I didn't. But I talked to one producer who was interested in the book, and he just read the first seven pages, and he called me and said, Sharon, this is a movie, this is what we're going to do, blah, blah, blah. He said, I don't know if I can go there. He said, I never had children, because I was afraid he was going to pass it on. My brother never had children, because he was afraid. But because of your first seven pages, I went back east and sat down with my dad and talked to him for the first time. Why did you marry a mother? When did you first know? He asked her questions he never had before. I thought, man, he feels so good that it helps somebody. Because he said he couldn't address it. This is a producer who did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I always thought I was different, that I was perfect, that I did everything right. Only when I was really honest and did the writing, I thought, I'm more like her than I thought. That was kind of scary. But I never thought I was going to get mentally ill. Yeah, interesting. But the other thing is that it's just not static. It was never static. It was always changing. It changed her whole life, your lives together. And she got worse. And that must have given you some concern about where it would all go. And then I find it interesting that at the end, you say, you found over time that you loved her more than you thought before. What was happening there? She was getting sicker and you were loving her more. Was that a dependency thing or what? Maybe it was the first time she had to depend on me, because I was her guardian of her property and person. And I was a trustee, so all of a sudden I'm in charge. And I think there was a dependency. She acted like a little girl, like she wanted me to take care of her. So there was that kind of feeling that she was incompetent. Wow, interesting. That's very interesting. So let's talk about your father for a minute. We've got to put this in perspective. Your father was a famous man here in Hawaii. And in large part, this is a book about growing up in Hawaii, isn't it? So tell us about your father and tell us about your growing up here. Well, we came in 1950. My uncle had bought a lot of land in Aina Jaina. I actually have a real cute story about that. He was a policeman, 19 years old, and he's at Cal Cal Corner. And he's listening to another people, another booth talking about Mr. Hine, buying all this property in Aina Jaina, and they're going to develop it. Oh, Hines, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're going to go out and see Mr. Hine. So my uncle is listening to all this, but he beats them to it. He gets the deal, Mr. Hine. They didn't have to do it. So they called my dad, who was a contractor in Hawaii and California, and we packed our bags fast and came, and we built most of the homes in Aina Jaina. That's how it started. Yeah. And he had a special recipe, which was just perfect for Hawaii in those days. Actually, it would be perfect for Hawaii, and these days too, let me add, can you talk about that? Sure. When he built the homes in Aina Jaina, he built another one in a while like a hollow for somebody with another contractor, and it went so bad. He went home and said, I'm not doing this anymore. It was just too much stress, and my mother said, you're in the wrong market. You've got to go low cost. You've got to do affordable, and this is what we're going to do. And my mother would share these moments of brilliance, you know, on my dad said, okay, so he came up with, well, he was a marketing person. He came from May Company in Nantes, Macy's, May Company in downtown Los Angeles. He knew how to market. So what he wanted people to do was be able to go in, hicks homes, look at a plan and say, I want that house on my lot. No changes. All the roofs were white because there were no changes. 100 homes a month, and it was just a set plan, and they couldn't make any changes, and they went real fast. 100 homes a month. And it was relatively cheap. Yes. The first home was two bedroom, one bath at $4,000. If we could all go back then. I know. And he did have, it was single wall, redwood construction and oak floors, and there was not much change to it. So give us a praisey of how it was when you came out here, and you found that your mother had a pretty serious mental disease, and was walking around on a Kalani Oni Oli highway with no clothes and a salad bowl on her head. You know, how was life for you, and ultimately you wound up as the person who was running hicks homes. Can you talk about how that happened? Well, I made it my mind as a little girl. I'm not going to be anything like her. I'm going to do nothing like her. So I decided, I don't know if this is chemical or what it is, maybe, but I just decided I'm not going to have moods like that. My kids are going to be able to trust me, and I'll be able to come home, and they're not going to find me naked painting their house. I don't want them to be dependent on, that I would be dependable. So I kind of made up that mind, and I took a path where I was going to be more independent than her. She could never hold a job. Because of the bizarre conduct. Yeah, well, she wouldn't take medication. So she never knew when she woke up what kind of mood she was going to be in. But at the time there was medication that she could have taken. Yes. I know she did electric shock therapy for years and years. It may not be the best thing. I'm not sure they'd do that anymore. But there was also medication, yeah. So the medication, I bet it's changed since the 1950s and 40s. They made her feel awful. She would vomit, she would scratch and scratch, and her legs would go like this, you know, and she just drove her crazy. So it was much more fun to be manic. She was more manic than she was depressed. That means happy. Yeah, manic. I used to say hi, but that's a different connotation today. In those days they called that manic depressive. Today they call it bipolar. But that's what she was diagnosed with. And medication was hard. I think she had it said she loved dark chocolate. So I remember at Liberty one day she spent 17,001 weekend at Liberty House. So she wanted to buy a particular bathing suit. So she bought it in a size, real big size. And she took a size down the same bathing suit, a different size. And the guys would say, salesman says, why are you buying so many sizes? She says, well, I'm losing weight. You know, so she wanted a bathing suit. But she spent 17,000, not only at Liberty House, but also at McInerney, Carol and Mary, all these old-style stores on Georgia. She had all this merchandise. And so I went back to Liberty House because she had been a Cacali wing at Queens, a psychiatric unit. So I take all this merchandise to Liberty House and I say, please can I return this? And the manager just looked at me and says, does she eat chocolate? And I says, what do you mean? So why am I in Antion, Texas? Every time she has chocolate, she goes off. I said, yeah, my mother's house was full of chocolate. Very interesting. Yeah, she loved chocolate. So to me it was a chemical thing. She had very sensitive chemistry. She was vegetarian. She didn't eat meat. Did you take your bathing suits back? Yeah. I said, I don't want to take. But that's a lot of money, you know? And I just said, I returned it all with her medical bills. So you became a parent to your mother over time? Yes. You tried to help her out of situations and make it right for her and protect her? It was so difficult because she was so unpredictable. Oh, there she is. She's so pretty. Yeah, oh, there's a picture. She's a very pretty woman. She was. And she looked so calm there in that picture. Right. But actually, not. She was very musical. So she'd sit down, play the piano. She could do anything. Good ear. In fact, one of our family members is a rock star. He started a group called the Sublime. And that's a big musical group right now. But he passed away 20 years ago and overdosed. But our whole side of the family on my mother's side are very musical. Good ears. And I took classical music. I'd be playing something at the other end of the house. Sharon, you hit a wrong note. Oh, that tells you something about the pitch and tone. I just think she was extra sensitive. Well, I'm going to take a break now. Sharon L. Hicks, the author of How Do You Grab? A Naked Lady, a very interesting memoir by Sharon out of 2012, published by Ambrose. It's Abbott, rather. And it's on Amazon. And you ought to take a look at it. We'll talk more about it right after this break. Hi, I'm Tim Apachello. I'm the host of Moving Hawaii Forward, a show dedicated to transportation issues and traffic issues here on Oahu. Join us every other Tuesday at 12 noon. And as we discuss how we try to solve our traffic headaches, not to include just the rail, but transit and carpooling and everything in between. So join us every other Tuesday. Moving Hawaii forward. Thank you. I'm Crystal from QuackTalk. I've got a new show here. You've got to tune in. Check out my topics on sensitive, provocative, female issues. So Tuesday mornings, 10 o'clock. Don't miss it. It's going to be fun and dangerous. Aloha. This is Kaley Akina with the weekly Ehana Kako. Let's work together program on the Think Tech Hawaii broadcast network Mondays at 2 o'clock PM. Movers and shakers and great ideas. Join us. We'll see you then. Aloha. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energyman at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. Bingo. We're back with Sharon. What's the L stand for? Lee. OK. I just started that when I put out my book because I Googled Sharon Hicks and there were too many of them. Too many Hicks. OK. I put an L there. But I mean, Sharon grew up in Hawaii and she's sort of a contemporary of mine, although we'd have known each other. We've only met her a few weeks ago. And David, you're older brother? Yes. And that's you. You were a beautiful child. Look at you. How old are you in that picture? I'm about three and David was four years old or seven. Yeah. And it was only a few years after that when all of this started happening, yeah? Yeah. So well, you had an interesting, when I say interesting, an interesting childhood. And I wonder how it changed you over time. How did it change you as a person? I mean, if your childhood had been less interesting, how would your life have been different? I don't know how to answer that. I think I would have had more self-esteem. I probably would have gone after a career and said, marrying, I went to college to get an MRS degree. I married when I was 19. And I married somebody who was going to go to dental school. And it was just all white picket fence. Everything's outlined for me. And I wasn't raised that way. But today's women, I just think it's fabulous. They can grow up to be anything they want. Well, you've demonstrated a fair amount of talent in business. You took over your father's business and managed to make it work for a long time. And you're the executive director of the, what is it? American Academy of Pediatrics in Hawaii. American Academy of Pediatric Doctors. And that's a national organization. Yes, it is. You got to have some management skills to do that, for sure. Right. I'm very well organized. I guess so. And maybe I got that from at 10 years old, I'm doing the household stuff. And those days, they had the old washing machine that goes like this. And you put it in this thing over here. And you put it through a ringer. So I didn't hang it up. I did that at 10 years old. My mother's in Kaniyoi. I didn't think anything of it. You just did it. Yeah. But how did you deal with the kids in school, the neighbors, who knew what was going on with your mother? Well, interestingly, one girl knew. The other one was oblivious until she read the book. My next-door neighbor was oblivious. She said, I didn't know. The other girl, she knew exactly what was going on. Because she says her mother and my dad were friends. But my mother would chase my dad down the street with a broom after him. You know, they would go out and help my dad. But it's interesting. And that's like David and I, my brother. I thought something was wrong. My brother thought she was just having fun. She was what? She was just having fun. Well, that's what it sounds like in parts of the book. She was just having fun. Yeah, she was just having fun. But maybe a little too much. And he was always so proud of her because she married when she was 16, had him when he was 18. She was one of the youngest mothers. And she was always out there. She just outrageous out there. And he always thought, that's my mother. And to me, I was like, that's my mother. But two children and one family, it's so interesting. How did your father deal with all this? He stayed with her. He took care of her. He tried his best. How successful was he? Well, he told me that she had an illness. And then it could be cancer, it could be heart. It could be anything, but hers happens to be in the brain. And you don't leave somebody for that. He was very strong. He was always loyal to her. Yes. What a great guy. This was consistent with all of the qualities that he demonstrated in business, right? And he was really a tower of a man. He was, your word was your bond. He even built an apartment building on a handshake. Can you believe that? No contract. I mean, you say something, you're going to do it. That's old style, huh? Old style, that's fabulous. I know. So can you find a provision, a paragraph, a passage that you like in the book that would personify at least how you feel about the book today? Well, it's kind of difficult. It's that my mother was arrested over 33 times, mainly for not keeping her clothes on. She loved being naked. She said she had nothing to hide. She's a pretty woman we just saw. She says, I have nothing to hide. It's only people running around with the clothes. And then she'd say something else too. If she'd think God has a sense of humor, look at the person next to you. She was always talking about people. Let me see. I just don't know. I know you asked me this a long time ago. OK, my dad liked to tell me it was love at first sight. He was visiting his best friend, Louie, when he saw mothers sleeping on the living room couch. That couch was the only piece of furniture in their rented apartment. Grandmother Noel moved constantly, trying to find the cheapest apartment for her and her three youngest children of 12, Louie, mother, and Ernie. It was 1933 and times were tough. The only work available for a single mother in Los Angeles was as a maid. Grandmother Noel scoured the morning papers for a cheaper apartment. Then when she found one, she piled the kids in the car and relocated. They moved 15 times in three years. That's the dearth of furniture. It was easier to pick up and leave if all they owned were the clothes. I'm going to marry your sister, dad said that afternoon, just like that. It was one of the things I admired most about my dad, the way he knew what he wanted, the way he wasn't afraid to snatch it up and make it his own. Whenever he told me the story, I thought it was sleeping beauty, only instead of a chase, little pecs on the cheeks or lips, mother and dad necked like crazy in the back of Louie's car, much to the consternation of Louie's girlfriend. Anyway, I thought dad, the perfect prince charming with the way he rescued mother from the life of poverty. She was 15 and dad was 17. They married the next year. But I sometimes wondered if she regretted getting married so young. Maybe if she'd waited a few years, waited until she was a little older, waited a little longer to have kids, to have me, maybe everything would have been okay. Who knows the answer to that? I know, they were so young. Now her illness put a lot of stress on you and you wound up with two failed marriages. You think there's a relationship between the stress you had at home with your mother and the need you had to take care of her and the failure of those marriages? Yes, but I didn't know that till I wrote the book. Oh, interesting. I never made a mistake, you had to understand. I didn't have failed marriages. So it was not part of my language, I went through all this stuff. And then I'm going, oh wow. You know, I didn't pick right. And when they, they were both alcoholics, but I'm not supposed to use the word alcoholic. They both drank too much. And I just, I guess I was raised in such an environment that I didn't know what was normal. And I didn't really pick people that were compatible with me. Well, that makes me want to revisit the issue of when you started writing and why you started writing and why it took you so long to actually close on the book. Because I mean, writing is therapeutic. Everyone knows that. To write your own biography, to talk your own story. I mean, it's the same thing as telling someone, except maybe it's even greater power when you write it down to the written word. But why did you start writing? What made you do that? Were you seeking some kind of resolution of issues in your life that you started writing? I always knew I was going to write. Even when I was in college, I read a book by Albert Camus, The Stranger. And I said, that's my style. I'm going to remember that. And all through my years, I just kept taking notes. I kept police records and everything. And then I thought, when I was 69 and she had passed away, I thought, I better do it. And I didn't know when I... You memorialized. No, I was just going to write her stories because they were so fantastic. I never heard stories like that. I always had the best story at any party and everything. Nobody had a mother like me, right? So I was just going to write her stories and I thought, wait a minute. I didn't know I was going to write about me. Interesting. And so I learned so much about me. And did you find that while you were writing when you started writing or did it take a while? It took a while because I had to be honest. So I tell anybody about writing a book, especially a memoir, it should be written like a novel. You should have all the, whatever the problem is, and then it should escalate beyond control and then you have to some kind of resolution. It has to be written like a novel and the protagonist can't be perfect. I didn't know I wasn't perfect, but after I wrote it, I thought, wow, I'm not perfect. No wonder I do it this way. Oh, wow, I learned a lot about myself. I didn't even know I was going to learn, but I had to be honest. And so you finished the book and then you found that it was popular. Now that's more than self-resolution. That's more than just tonic for you. Then you have the validation of knowing that a lot of people like this, they want this. They want the clarity, they want the candor, they want the honesty. What kind of reaction do you get from them and what kind of reaction does that give you? Well, at first when it was published, I felt very naked. Oh my, it's out there. It's like you can't bring it back, it's out there. And I felt very naked in my being. And then things happened so fast. People, I had two movie options right away and I got scared, I got this award. All of a sudden I went like this. I thought, oh my gosh, now what do I do? It just kind of hit me. They know about you. Yeah, exactly. But it was a very good feeling to write it. I spoke at the population at Women's Prison a couple of weeks, a month ago. And I didn't know how it was gonna be. But when I started talking about being 10 years old and my mother being in prison or my mother being in the hospital, I looked up and I saw some of the ladies crying. And so I knew I reached them because they are also in certain places in their life because they won't take their meds and their mothers. And I told them I was mad. I was mad at my mother for not taking medication. I was mad, she wasn't, she didn't wear the little waist dresses and cookies and you know, like. Yeah, yeah, it was. I leave it to Beaver's mother. She wasn't like that at all. No, like, leave it to Beaver. And I was mad. And that was the time when the Beaver was the young. Yes, still, but the 50s wife, you know, how they meet their husband at the door with a drink and how they're always perfect. The house is perfect. No, that wasn't my mother. And she didn't join any women's clubs. She wouldn't go to PTA. She didn't do any of those things. She'd expect a mother to do it. You know, the funny thing about it is that, you know, what doesn't kid you makes you stronger. And then I think that applies here too. I mean, it could have been really disastrous for you, Sharon, but you came out of it and I wrote the one word down and I told you before that I came away after reading your book and it's the word survival. It made you survive and brought you now to a place where you have a successful book. You have a successful career. Oh, thank you. You have a successful family. You told me you have multiple grandchildren all over the place. Yes. Things have worked out pretty well, haven't they? And when you asked me how I survived, I learned early on that life is a mind game. Wow, you heard it here on Think Tank. Yeah, you just have to keep changing your mind, change your perspective about things and things change. Yeah. It comes from here. Yeah, that's great. That's what I learned, too.