Winter in Chicago is like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” Winter is all seductive and pretty at first. Then, Winter gets a little possessive. “Hey,” says Winter, “you never come out and play anymore.” You try to put a little distance in between yourself and Winter, maybe go on vacation someplace tropical, but before you know it, Winter’s peeking in your windows at night and your kid’s bunny is on the stove in a nice Bechamel. You get a creepy feeling on the back of your neck and you realize that Winter is standing RIGHT BEHIND YOU and Winter has a knife. There’s a long, bitter struggle in which you and Winter get sliced up a little, but you finally get Winter’s head submerged in the bathtub for a good, long while. You swear you can see Winter’s eyes glaze over. “Thank god,” you think, “it’s finally over.” Like hell. It’s just March. Before you know it, Winter vaults out of the tub, squalling like a cat in a blender and runs at you with the knife. If it wasn’t for your lovely wife Spring (played by Anne Archer) and her lethal aim with a pistol, Winter would have gutted you like a Taun-taun. Whoops. Mixed my movie metaphors there...

The point is, winter in Chicago is long and brutal and defeating. And March, contrary to popular belief, is the worst part of winter, when the snow and the bitter cold gives way to slush and sleet and a kind of demonic WET that sinks into your bones. Long about last March, I sent off an email, requesting an audition slot for a summer job at a theater in Maine. I had no reason to believe I would be cast because, at that point of the year, I had no reason to believe that summer would ever come.

Improv Acadia’s auditions were uncharacteristically…well, fun. Jen Shepard and Larrance Fingerhut, the married couple who own and operate Improv Acadia, were welcoming and gracious. When it came time for us to improvise a song, I saw some people blanch, but I was gleeful. I hardly ever get to use my freakish ability for dirty rhymes in my day to day life as a data entry clerk, so this was heaven. I got called back for the final round of auditions, which I looked forward to almost as much as I look forward to Memorial Day (my favorite holiday…I hate Christmas).

Long story short, I got cast and, a month after moving in with the Boy currently known as the Fiancé, I was on my way to Bar Harbor, Maine. I flew into Manchester, New Hampshire with Jason Chin, another Chicago improviser about to do a tour of duty at Improv Acadia, renting a car to drive the alleged four hours to Bar Harbor from Manchester. Arriving at 10 in the morning, thinking we had all the time in the world, we stopped in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for lunch. I realized we would be lucky to make it to Bar Harbor by May of the following year as we sat trapped in an endless parade of Massholes heading north on Route 1. We finally made it to the house we’d be staying at in Ellsworth, Maine just in time to catch a ride with the last car going in to Bar Harbor. Pat Shay, an incomparable improviser from New York, took us in to “town” and played tour guide along the way. As we crossed the bridge from the mainland of Maine, Pat said “This is Mount Desert Island. The trifecta of isolation: Mount…Desert…Island.”

Before I had even unpacked totally we were rotated into shows, playing for sold out audiences, up to three times a night, every night of the week. The shows were similar in content to the shows I had done for four years in Boston at the Improv Asylum, and it felt a little like coming home. Only, in some ways, better. For one, the Improv Asylum only had a beer and wine license. Improv Acadia had liquor. And artichoke dip.

One thing I noticed about Maine and found irresistibly cute for about a day and a half were how many businesses incorporated the name of the state into the business name. “Mainely Candles,” “Mainely Gifts,” “Mainely Cupolas,” and, no joke, “Mainely Maine.” Blueberries and lobster and LL Bean casual knitwear were everywhere. Everything stank of pine and fresh air. Because our only job was to do shows and participate in the occasional rehearsal, we had a lot of down time to enjoy all of this Maine-iness. Always an iconoclast, my favored leisure activity was greasing myself up with Pam cooking spray and sitting in the sun. I wanted people to KNOW I had been in Vacationland all of August, even if it meant sacrificing my epidermis. At one point, Jen quizzically looked at me and said “You put on self-tanning lotion and THEN you sat in the sun?” I just gave her a knowing chuckle and picked up my People magazine to retire to the front yard. Some people will never understand the passions of the melanin-crazed.

Three weeks went by faster than I ever thought possible, and I found myself reluctantly preparing to go back to Chicago. I packed away my seashells and pictures and postcards and books and got ready to do my last show. I remember standing out on the deck outside of the Improv Acadia theater on my last night, surrounded by fog. The smell of the ocean was thick in the air and it was already a little chilly. Summer was over and the gorgeous light that filtered in to the sitting room in the house in Ellsworth was no longer mine. I had to say goodbye to sunsets over the harbor and the eagles and Echo Lake and the sky…the beautiful Downeast Maine night sky, positively lousy with stars. During the last show, I saw the Boy in the house. He had come to take me home.

I should interject at this point that the Boy decided that Maine was the perfect place to propose to me. We were high atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park when he felt the moment was exactly right to ask me to marry him. Unfortunately, as he dropped to one knee, I paid no attention to him. I was too busy watching the family, not ten feet away from us, that was upending an enormous bag of cremains onto a stunted bush. The wind picked up at that exact moment, blowing a cloud of particulate Grandma at us. The family said “She would have wanted it this way” and I grabbed the Boy’s shoulder and frantically whispered “RUN!” Poor Boy didn’t actually get to ask me to marry him until several days later, in a hotel, far away from the ashes of anyone’s ancestors. I said yes.

For three weeks at Improv Acadia, I got paid to do what I loved, surrounded by good, gracious and gifted people. I sat in awe of the people I was fortunate enough to perform with. I had wonderful conversations with the people who chose to come to see our shows. I adored the remarkable staff that kept us running and made the theater feel even more like a family. And then I had to leave. That’s part of what made the experience so dear to me: it was finite. Nothing gold can stay, or so said Robert Frost. It’s a remarkable feeling, though, to do the work that you love for your living, even briefly. I hope that every actor gets a chance to feel that way. Only not at Improv Acadia. I saw it first, you bitches.

Amy would like to thank Jen, Larrance, Cayne, Brian, Megan, Marion, Michael, Jason, Pat, Marta, Sarah, Nissa, Declan, Julie, Arman, and Portia, who makes the best ‘Stair Diver’ she ever had.