A full house
Sylvia and Bob Hollingsworth fill their home with love and six adopted kids
Sylvia and Bob Hollingsworth were in the process of adopting a baby boy when they learned he had a rare medical condition. The infant would need time in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit and monitoring throughout his life.
“What better family than us?” Sylvia replied. “I was born with a cleft palate. My husband has only one good eye. We will fight for this child.”
That was 1997. Today John is a strapping teenager a head taller than his mother, and he has five younger brothers and sisters who also are adopted.
They are typical siblings except they are a rainbow of colors, and they understand how fortunate they are to have a mom, a dad and each other.
In the greater Houston area, roughly 1,740 children
in the care of Child Protective Services are available for adoption but still waiting for parents. Statewide, 6,388 children wait and wonder when their turn will come.
Sylvia and Bob met at their Mormon church on Houston’s near north side, but Sylvia was so focused on her day job, her church work, her father, her 14 brothers and sisters and their families, she didn’t pay much attention to the man who would be her future husband. But he paid attention to her. When Sylvia bought a pretty cottage in the Heights, Bob repaired the electrical wiring and helped her pick out ceiling fans.
When Sylvia had to represent her office at a funeral and a girlfriend wouldn’t go with her, Bob would and did.
When Sylvia came down with poison ivy, Bob had the right ointments and lotions to stop the pain. And he made house calls.
In the spring of 1991, when Bob asked Sylvia to marry him, she said no. But she started a list of pros and cons.
Soon Sylvia threw away the list and peppered Bob with questions.
If they got married, could they live in her house?
If her dad got sick, could he come and live with them?
If they had kids, could she be a stay- at- home mom? Yes, yes, yes. That August, Bob and Sylvia shopped for wedding rings, and they found one with six small diamonds. That was Sylvia’s dream— to have six children. She imagined herself rocking babies to sleep, baking cookies, helping with homework, patching up scrapes and cuts. Bob, she knew, already was an expert dad. He had an adult daughter from an earlier marriage, and Sylvia admired his parenting and grandparenting skills.
The wedding was lovely. But after the newlyweds settled into their new life together, Sylvia couldn’t help wondering— where were the babies?
Roughly 10 percent of all women of reproductive age and 15 percent of all couples of reproductive age are infertile, experts say.
After a few years, the Hollingsworths tried in vitro fertilization. No babies. That’s when they turned to adoption.
The Hollingsworths went through the social- service department at their church to get John.
His Klippel- Trenaunay syndrome affects the development of blood vessels, soft tissues and bones. The two sides of his body are not exactly symmetrical, and he has to go to the doctor much more than he’d like. Mostly, however, the eighth- grader leads a perfectly normal life.
“I like to ride my bike over to Target,” John says. “And I like to be with friends and just mess around. Sometimes we go to the corner store and buy slushies.”
He also likes Boy Scouts, camping, gymnastics, cooking and the holidays that are fast approaching.
“One Thanksgiving morning, my mom and her friend were in the kitchen cooking a turkey, but there was toomuch grease in the pan and it overflowed.”
He laughs at the memory of the smoke alarm going off and clouds of smoke billowing into the living room, and he thinks every family has or should have a little turkey drama tucked deep in their histories of Thanksgivings past.
“That turkey was good,” he says.
Sariah, 11, and the rest of the Hollingsworth brood came from Child Protective Services.
Sariah on Sariah: “I came when I was a tiny, tiny baby. I like to read ‘ The Hunger Games.’ I’d like to be a life guard or a therapist when I grow up.”
When neither parent can turn on the TV with the remote, Sariah can. And she likes to cook, pile in bed with her sisters, play dolls, run around the backyard with the family’s three dogs and hold kid meetings for the 10- and- under set. ( John is too old and not allowed.)
During those meetings, Sariah is firmly in charge. And in the summer, when the kids play school, she is the reading and math teacher.
James, 10, is her second- incommand.
“I’m lucky to be in a big family,” James says, drifting through the living room. “And our turtle’s name is Bobby.”
( Like Dad, the turtle has only one good eye.)
James is a Cub Scout and the writer in the family. A recent six- page story includes him, John and fairies in need of rescue.
Allie, 7, is athletic, another good reader and a musician.
When her dad shows her some tunes on the family piano, she picks them up quickly. She’s a powerful singer, too.
The Hollingsworths remember that Allie didn’t respond to normal stimulation her first six months of life. Bob, an electrical designer in the oil and gas industry, says it was almost as if she didn’t see them. “Now,” he reports, “she’s as loving as she can be.”
Anthony, 6, and Rachel, 5, are biological siblings. Anthony is missing his two front teeth and this particular day, he’s playing on the rope swing in the front yard.
Then he runs into the house— everything he does is at top speed— presents Sylvia with his schoolwork, brings John half of a chicken salad sandwich and squeezes Rachel’s cheeks until they’re both giggling.
Rachel is petite, sweet, seemingly as delicate as a rose. One moment she looks like a character in an oil painting; the next she is doing chin- ups in the backyard. As her dad talks about her, she crawls into his lap.
People ask Sylvia, 53, and Bob, 60, whether they love their adopted kids asmuch as they would biological children. Of course they do. People also ask them if they have a favorite child.
A different one all the time, they say.
The kids are lounging in the living room, talking about adoption.
All are truly eloquent on the subject, but it may be Anthony, the first- grader, who is most succinct.
He says, “I would like to have adopted children. I want to teach them to read. It’s important to have adopted children so every child has a family.”