I’m not sure when, exactly, I started counting down the days until my child would graduate from school. 

Was it on December 14, 2012, as I held tight to my second grader during our bedtime story ritual after the day’s news coverage from Newtown, Connecticut had left me feeling as though someone had dropped me into the empty drum of a concrete mixer and flipped the switch?

Was it the day that 28 children and two teachers were murdered in cold blood in an elementary school that I began a mental countdown that would take us away from active shooter drills and stay in place warnings? 

Or was it nearly two years later, on October 24, 2014 when a high schooler in Marysville, Washington shot and killed four of his schoolmates before dying by suicide? 

I won’t continue to list off each of the tragedies that have occured in the years since Sandy Hook. 

You know them all already. 

We all do. 

And last year, just one month after a gunman in Uvalde, Texas walked into yet another elementary school and murdered yet more children and educators, my daughter finally made it to that milestone, finally walked across the gymnasium, accepted a diploma and kept on walking. 

We are the lucky ones. 

We were able to lay down the heavy weights we have carted around since Sandy Hook and rest for just a little while.  

But last week when I spotted an announcement from my daughter’s district alerting parents to a threat made toward the school on social media, I realized that weight will never fully go away.

Reading the announcement brought back that familiar clench to my stomach. I found myself reaching for my cellphone to text my daughter before remembering they are far away at college now. 

Even as that realization hit, I still thought of friends who work there, students I have watched grow up. Ours is a small community after all. Your kid’s graduation from a local district doesn’t sever your ties with the school community — not by a long shot. 

Fortunately, a Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office investigation determined the individual making the threat was not a danger to the children or staff in the district. 

I’m glad everyone is safe. 

Those of us who have raised school-aged kids in the years since Sandy Hook have seen firsthand how each successive tragedy has changed childhood. 

We have raised the first generation of kids to know exactly where in each classroom one can hide out of the line of sight of anyone peeking through the glass windows of a classroom door. We’ve raised the first generation of teenagers to send “I love you” texts to parents and guardians when a loudspeaker screams into the classroom and a panicked secretary calls for everyone to stay exactly where they are. 

We have worried about the lasting impacts these events will have on our kids. 

Perhaps we need to set aside a bit of that worry for ourselves.