One Saturday morning in December 1986 as Walker Scott was shuttering its chain of Southern California department stores I found myself wandering through its Solana Beach location looking for Christmas goodies when I spied a rather grim-looking collection of mannequins piled in the back of the store near the loading dock.

It was always a bit of a challenge to find Christmas presents for my father, an artist and museum exhibit designer with a love of unusual objects that were displayed around the house – from antique musical instruments to a turn-of-the-century carousel horse. He also had a wonderfully wicked sense of humor. The minute I laid eyes on the 1970s-era mannequins I knew exactly how and where one of them would find a new home for the holidays.

I inquired about their fate and was told they were not long for this world; I was welcome to help myself. I awkwardly poked around until I found a smiling, naked model, blonde wig slightly askew, missing several fingers, and supported on a glass base via an undignified metal rod inserted into her plaster posterior. With a twist of two wrists I quickly swapped out her damaged hands for happier ones, carried her upper torso, trunk, hands, and arms to my car, and drove off hoping no one would look over and see the body parts lying across the backseat.

Knowing Dad was out for several hours of golf and lunch with his pals, I went straight to my parents’ house and quickly dressed her in a revealing period polyester blouse and white slacks and proceeded to photograph her in various poses around the house. She was captured picking oranges in the small grove, helping my mother carry groceries up the back stairs, playing the piano, sipping Chardonnay in the patio, and sitting in the Jacuzzi. She was then squirreled away in the cedar closet behind some garment bags until Christmas day. Once the pictures had been developed, I put them into a small album with captions asking if in exchange for being so helpful around the house, she could stay.

Dad was delighted with the picture album stocking stuffer, and vastly amused by the new family member who was promptly invited upstairs. My mother named her Clarabelle and found a slightly more respectable outfit for her. Clarabelle spent the next 30 years posed in the large picture window watching over the dining table with her frozen smile.

Clarabelle never failed to produce startled double takes from unsuspecting dinner guests but over time she became the silent family retainer, a rather odd but accepted presence by my siblings and most of our children (my niece Nathalie would take the outside stairs to avoid Clarabelle) until she and her prom dress faded into the background.

That is until one Easter when Clarabelle played a starring role. For as long as I can remember my parents would produce challenging Easter egg hunts for the children and adults. There were no obvious giveaways; all the eggs were cleverly hidden in one room between knee and chest height. Most importantly, there was always a silver and golden egg filled with cash; ten dollars in the silver and in the gold, a crisp twenty dollar bill for the lucky hunter.

On this Easter Sunday all the eggs soon were accounted for except the elusive gold. We had scoured every inch of the grand living and dining room until the giggles and chatter had given way to complete silence. As usual, no hints were forthcoming. Not even a “warm, warmer.…” to help zero in.

My prim, older sister Josie, however, visiting from Michigan, rose to the occasion. The mother of three boys and endowed with my mother’s demure demeanor and seemingly contradictory competitive streak, Josie was known as the “velvet steamroller” for calmly dispatching tennis opponents back home with nary a naughty word or unpure thought. Now she glided silently around the room, pausing momentarily in front of Clarabelle before moving to the far side of the room, counting a few beats, then proudly announcing: “Got it!” to our collective groans.

“Where was it?!” everyone demanded as she slowly unfolded the twenty with a satisfied smile. “Clarabelle had it,” was all she would say.

My father was in stitches. When sufficiently recovered, he told us what Josie couldn’t: the golden Easter egg had been wedged in Clarabelle’s crotch.