For many teenagers "Mother's Day" offers an opportunity to thank their real "moms" -- not their birth mothers but the women who raised them. Denishia Thomas, a 15-year-old high school student in Alameda, Calif., writes about her great-grandmother who took on the task of raising her when she was 69. Thomas is a staff reporter for YO! Youth Outlook, a newspaper by and about youth produced by Pacific News Service.

When I think of my birth mother, I feel numb. I can only focus on the woman who was my real mother, my great-grandmother who raised me.

I love you Mama for deciding I would be your child. At sixty-nine years of age, you had already sired one generation and I was two generations down and illegitimate. You fed me when I cried. You dealt with my toddler years and those incessant questions. Combed my hair and tried to prepare my young mind and soul for the complications you knew couldn't be avoided. I'm grateful to you for reading to me every day and opening my mind to my history; for making me stand against the wall for half an hour every other day so my back would be straight.

Oh, and I remember walking with you to the Red Cross when you were seventy-four and I was five years old to collect that salty government cheese and butter, that canned fruit and bread. So I could eat well, which I did, and you would not let me touch any pork. You made some fried chicken to die for and Mama, thank you for that bread pudding and for never asking where I got the pumpkin on Halloween.

Thank you for discipline and for old stories about the South where the blood relatives are. I love you, Mama, for giving me a sense of character. Thank you for being happy I am a girl and teaching me pride in being a woman of color, helping to find where my roots are and always telling me I was intelligent and just as good if not karmically cleaner than those who seemed to get more chances than me. You told me to get in touch with all cultural sides in myself -- black, Latino, American Indian, white -- and that they all had many things in common and I was merged and complete.

Mama, do you remember when I asked you if I could be a black panther for Halloween and you told me I was a black panther every day in your house. Then you proceeded to tell me about the cause, and about everyone from the Queen of Sheba to Malcolm X. And when you started to get senile from life's stresses finally catching up to you, I know you thought first about sending me to relatives, trying to keep me out of the system, away from foster care and residential treatment homes. When it didn't work, you had my back still. Riding AC Transit for an hour to see me in a level twelve group home when you were eighty-one.

Now you'll be eighty-five next month. I know there have been times when your love has been almost all I've had. You done been through it, Mama, and I give you every iota of respect in my soul. It ain't enough, in my opinion, though you don't seem to ask for even that much. You just want to see me on the right mental and moral track.

I love you for that, Mama, and I always will. You got to be the biggest player I know. Telling me when I'm making you proud and loving me with no strings attached.