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GREENSBORO - Two days before Christmas, let me tell you about Martha and Rose, Tim and John.

They're participants at the Adult Center for Enrichment. And they like to bowl.

They're not all that good. They'll tell you that - and laugh. But they have a good time. They'll see the pins topple at Gate City Lanes and tell you about a shadow of something they remember.

That's a good thing.

Many of the participants who attend the center live with dementia, Parkinson's disease or some medical condition or physical ailment that severely limits their independence.

They can't take care of themselves, and they can't be left alone. They live in a constricted world where they often hear "No.''

But when they bowl, they live in a world where they hear "Yes.''

They're happy, they're jazzed and they're reconnecting with a time when, maybe, they bowled a perfect game or earned a trophy for a shelf.

Take Rose Taylor. When she bowls, she eyes her ball like a watchmaker examining an antique timepiece. Every few feet it rolls, she'll lean left and lean right, and by the time her ball hits the pin, she lets out an "Ooooaaaaaaaaaaaaah'' you can hear at least a few lanes over.

"I won a trophy for playing,'' she tells me.

Martha Goins stutters. She's hard to understand. But ask her about bowling and she'll talk about that memory of her past, of a rhythm and motion created by strikes and spares.

"It came right back to me,'' she says. "I took kids bowling in North Carolina. (Bowling) is like children. It's like play.''

Pat Cleary sits beside her. He helps Martha explain. He helps the others explain, too. He's worked full time at the center since April. It's where he wants to be.

He worked in restaurants for 31 years. But when his father Jim's Alzheimer'was diagnosed, Cleary changed the gears of his professional life.

After his 73-year-old father died in 2003, he went back to school, got a degree in gerontology at UNCG and later worked as an intern at the Adult Center for Enrichment.

Now, he's the center's program director. For $65 a day, participants get two meals, hands-on activities, a snack and an excursion at least once a month that'll take them somewhere in the county, where they can collect new memories to remember.

Like last week to Gate City Lanes.

"Their memories are going, and they know something is wrong with them, but they don't know what it is,'' Cleary says. "But here (at the bowling alley), they can have a good time and they improve their self-esteem. And we all need to improve our self-esteem.''

Take John Jordan. He spends his days in a wheelchair, and he mumbles when he talks.

But get him in a bowling lane, beside his buddy Tim Johnson.

Tim will set up a steel-frame contraption in front of John's wheelchair that helps him roll the ball. And when John rolls it, he'll hold up his hand as if he's steering the ball.

When it bumps his pins, John lets out an all-vowel shout.

"We're close,'' Tim tells me between frames.

"We watch TV, play bingo and talk. I listen to what he says. And it's just enjoyment. It feels real good.''

I ask John about that. He tells me something.

I can't understand. I ask him again.

Then, I get it.

"He's my buddy,'' John tells me.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com