‘One may often find round a single table all the modifications which extreme sociability has introduced into our midst: love, friendship, business, speculation, influence, solicitation, patronage, ambition, intrigue; that is why conviviality affects every aspect of human life, and bears fruits of every flavour ‘- Brillat-Savarin
Last week our Lazy Susan was delivered. I was ecstatic. It had taken almost 20 years of married life to persuade my One & Only to forego the joy he gets from sitting at the head of the family dining table, and succumb to my long-whispered desire for a round table. It was almost too late. Our eldest had already left for university. We were reduced to four, sitting miles apart across oceans of glorious Canadian cedar and having to slide bowls and condiments to each other across the surface, rubbed to a high gloss by Phoebe.
My idea of cosy family dinners, inspired by my own childhood of six-plus-extras squeezed in elbow to elbow, seemed to have been lost in translation. Unless we asked all our neighbours to dinner every night, the table loomed, vast and undernourished.
So I went on a hunt for a Lazy Susan. It has taken two years, but last month I finally found someone at a local craft exhibit who could make me one. I ordered it nervously, paid a large deposit and waited with baited breath and fingers crossed, dubious that it would ever arrive from deepest, darkest Bacolod. I needn’t have worried. Not only did it arrive, it was perfect: neither too big that the plates are balanced precariously along the rim of the table, nor too small that we are still stretching into the middle to reach the salad, and knocking over the wine glasses in the process. What’s more, by pure fluke, it matched the colour of the table.
And suddenly the table doesn’t look so vast. Even when we are only four, it has reduced that sense of distance when we gather for dinner. Somehow the distance has shrunk, and we all fit. Cosily.
So what exactly is a Lazy Susan? And why the ridiculous name? It’s simply a round platter on a revolving base that sits in the centre of a round dinner table, creating easy access to dishes and condiments. In modern times it has also been used in corner kitchen cupboards to make it easier to to reach the saucepans.
Most records I found agree that it was invented during the 18th century, although it had no official name until the early 1900s. Several reports say that the name Lazy Susan was first used in a Vanity Fair advertisement in 1917, another that the term made its first appearance in a Good Housekeeping article in 1906, yet another that it first appeared in the Christian Science Monitor in 1912, when it was described as ‘the characteristic feature of the self-serving dinner table.’
Prior to introduction of the name ‘Lazy Susan’, they were referred to as dumbwaiters, a term that is now applied to a small elevator for transporting food. Apparently one disgruntled footman complained about being “supplanted by a certain stupid Utensil call’d a Dumb Waiter” that was preferred for its silent contribution at the dinner table!
It seems most plausible that the later name derived from the fact that Susan was a slangy reference to female servants, and the new rotating tray meant that ‘Susan’ did not need to lift a finger once the dishes were on the table.
Whatever its origins, it has been a popular addition to our family, though I now have to discourage my One & Only from trying to cover it in all the souvenirs he has been collecting in the Middle East, and the boys from spinning it at high speed so everything flies off! When everyone has settled down, conviviality and mirth, comfort and loquacity mingle happily with the pasta and the Parmesan, the wine and the water, just like my childhood memories. And all is good in my world.