The Evolution of Sweetness
After Monday�s show where Steve/Nick slips and calls Kayla Sweetness it made me think about the nickname Sweetness. It started out as a way for Steve to get to Kayla. He called her Sweetness the first time when he was on the phone making obscene phone calls to her in Cleveland. It was used then to scare her.When Kayla came back to Salem and met Steve face to face she hated being called Sweetness by him. Perhaps even then she felt the intimacy of the word and was uncomfortable being called such an endearment by someone she was unsure of. She even told him not to call her that. To which he replied, �I like to call you that you�re sweet.� That reply seemed to ease Kayla�s anxiety over the word. She never asked him not to call her that after that reply. It was an endearment Steve didn�t use for anyone else. He was notorious for nicknames. Hope was Sweet Thing, Savannah Wilder was Love Bunny, almost every woman was baby but there was only one Sweetness.
When Kayla began to see a different side to Steve and started to become attracted to him she seemed not to mind the name. I believe that was when it became special to her, a word a friend uses toward another friend. When she realized that Steve would protect her and not hurt her she started to see the word as a reassurance.
She grew to like the word using it as a sort of encouragement to Steve. When she gave Steve the cookbook for their first Christmas she said, mocking him �Read what I wrote Sweetness.� It was a way of telling him she now liked being called Sweetness.
As the relationship evolved so did the meaning of Sweetness. It became a very intimate term. A way for Steve to tell Kayla he loved her, even when he couldn�t say the actual words. And again, it was a reassurance to Kayla. As long as he still called her Sweetness she knew he cared deeply about her. It became a word that transcended any other words. It was a word that became the ultimate declaration of love from someone who was so fearful of love. When Kayla is married to Jack and he accidentally says it in the scene where they get stranded at the cabin, time stops briefly. He realizes he�s slipped and told her something very intimate very special almost that he loved her. And she felt it too.
During their 1988 wedding the most intimate and most emotional thing he said during his vows was when he cried and said, �I love you Sweetness.� It magnified how he felt about her, he loved her, but he added that word that had traveled through their relationship and evolved into a new meaning.
Kayla was the most important person in Steve�s life, so naturally when Stephanie was born, a new woman to hold great importance, he gave her the name Little Sweetness. Still using the term he reserved for Kayla but adding Little to it, sure Stephanie was little but it also seemed again to reassure to Kayla that yes he loved Stephanie but not as much as he loved Kayla. Little Sweetness. And the last word he said on his �deathbed� was Sweetness. The last thing Kayla heard him tell her for 16 years. So when she heard that word again, as a slip from Nick, it was very emotional. It�s more then a word. It�s a declaration of overwhelming and eternal love.