My ‘ghosts’ are no longer the ones who tell me to save the silver for a better day…
The temperature of the room slightly alters when the fire from the fireplace crackles in the air. The sweet peppery smell of fresh white freesia starts to fill in the room as the linen thwacked on the dining table. Between the clanks of the ceramic tableware and the silver cutleries, the noise of the world temporarily stands still. Arranging the candles on the table, today feels like a quiet act of devotion. I am drawing a line in the sand.
Beyond there is the cry of the sky, but on this side, there is me, the wight of my silver and the right to be celebrated, even for the time of a dinner.
We don’t wait for witnesses to live with grace.
The only one waiting tonight is the specific silence in the exact moment when the last glass is placed. I am clearing more than a space; I am clearing my mind.
A strike of a match, then the scent of lavender and beeswax erupt.
The shadows swiftly shift and the room softens. The way the flame reflects in the glassware like a tiny, trapped star is enchanting. The peaceful anticipation energy I was waiting for earlier is starting to hum.
A table can be a mundane thing to have. A piece of art designed to be dismantled. However, with a bit of creativity and imagination, the practical wooden piece previously covered with books, notes, and papers can be transformed into the ritual table.
In a world that we never sits still, the act of trimming a stem of white freesia feels like a quiet rebellion.
Each object on this table has a meaning. It’s a lineage, a silent language passed down through the geometry of forks and the scent of ironed linen.
After all, we rarely set a table with only our own hands; we use the hands of those who taught us. To set the table is to invite the ghosts to sit, though I do not always let them dictate the menu. I see my grandmother’s hands in the way I smooth the cloth, but I feel my own heart in the choice of the fabric—a raw, heavy linen she would have found too ‘unfinished.’
I did not inherit the silver, so I had to go looking for the weight of it myself. I had to learn the language of linen by touching a hundred different fabrics until one spoke back. This table isn’t a museum of my past; it’s a map of my own becoming.
I am also loosening the ancestral habit of waiting for a guest.
I am the guest.
My ‘ghosts’ are no longer the ones who tell me to save the silver for a better day; they are the ones who whisper that the peppermint-bite of a white freesia is the only inheritance that matters: the permission to be happy in the present tense.
Setting the table is my daily meditation, a rhythmic pulse of clink, smooth, and place that stills the mind. It doesn’t matter if the ritual was inherited or invented in a moment of lonely necessity. When the candle is lit and the scent of freesia begins to bloom, I am no longer drifting.
I am home.
We are often told to save our finest things for ‘special occasions,’ but tonight I choose otherwise. To set the table is to honour the self. It is the art of proving that being alive, right now, is occasion enough.
Shima Trisna 
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