WASHINGTON - For much of Washington, the anthrax scare made last Thursday another day of confusion in the aftermath of the nation's violent awakening to a new life of struggle.

He traveled to Manhattan's Old Federal Courthouse, a few blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center, for the sentencing of four terrorists in the twin bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on Aug. 7, 1998.

Kavaler told again how his wife, Prabhi, a fellow diplomat, had been buried in the rubble of the embassy at Nairobi. He told the court how he has relived in nightmares his futile search for her through "the clouds of dust, the dangling wires, the invisible cries for help that were muffled by the mounds of concrete and twisted steel." He condemned the killers with words of cold fury and expressed the wish that they would come to understand the enormity of their crime as "their minds and bodies rot in prison."

Then Kavaler resumed the larger mission in his life. He

returned to his home in the Virginia suburbs for supper with the two school-age daughters that he is raising alone.

For me, Kavaler's story is a source of light amid the darkness of recent weeks. In the decent conduct of ordinary people who have lived with terror for more than a few weeks, there is hope for the rest of us.

It happens that Maya Kavaler, a third grader with a shy smile and luminous eyes, has been the schoolmate of one of my daughters since the family returned, wounded, from Nairobi.

Somewhere among the birthday parties and back-to-school nights, my wife and I noticed that Howard was rearing his children alone. We did not know the circumstances, but we could not help but see that he was a man of unusual tenderness toward children. Equally appealing was the quiet way he carried himself.

Only by chance — a mention of his testimony in a news account of the embassy bombing trial earlier this year — did we learn of the terrible burden that he also carried with such grace.

We imagined that the images of the attacks of Sept. 11 were especially cruel to the survivors of the African embassy bombings that had killed 224 and maimed thousands more.

Coming in the midst of the anthrax scare, the sentencing of the embassy bombers seemed an apt reminder that these people, having borne so much, still found a pathway home to a life that includes birthday parties and back-to-school nights, as well as the bad dreams.

How does somebody go about putting one foot in front of the other after something like this has happened? Kavaler talked to me about this question the other day.

"A lot of it has to do with circumstances. You're an adult. You realize you have responsibilities," he answered. "I had two daughters to raise. There was nothing to be gained by feeling embittered and feeling angry and letting that affect the way I cared for the girls."

He taught himself to hold the anger at the killing of his wife in a place well apart from the love of his daughters. "I would not let bin Laden and al-Qaeda and the four defendants interfere with the way I raised my daughters," he explained.

"If I were simply to retreat into a shell of bitterness, I would be letting the terrorists win. Not only would they have killed my wife, they would have killed me in a real metaphorical sense.

"I can't let that happen."

Remarkably, Kavaler has learned ways to distill larger expressions of humanity from the most personal feelings of loss. One way was through the celebration of the life of Prabhi Kavaler, a native of India who became an American and worked in the Foreign Service alongside her husband for years.

"At my wife's funeral, there were Jews, there were Muslims, there were Christians, there were Sikhs," he said. "In death, she was a symbol of everything the terrorists were against. She represented tolerance; they represented intolerance."

There was similar healing to be had in his attendance at the trial of the four men accused of roles in the embassy bombings. "You have to understand that this was the first incident of terrorism overseas where we've caught the bad guys and tried them and brought them to justice," Kavaler said.

"Many days I would juxtapose in my mind the system that they wanted to impose on us — where there is so little freedom and individuals don't really mean very much — with our system, the one in which they were being tried.

"They were accorded the same rights as anyone accused in our criminal justice system. They were treated as human beings. They were treated with respect by the judge and the prosecutor and the jury. Then the four were convicted and, last week, sentenced to life behind bars. So the system worked. To me it was a source of pride and a source of comfort to live in such a society," Kavaler said.

The court was a forum, too, for the survivors of the terror. Last Thursday, Kavaler read the judge a letter from Maya's 13-year-old sister, Tara, who wrote of their mother: "I miss the time we spent together. I miss that she loved me like no one else could. And I miss her helping me with things that were hard. My heart hurts every day. I hope it will go away. A kid's heart shouldn't hurt every day. A kid shouldn't have to miss her mother every day."

Thank goodness these girls have a father who possesses the balm to apply to such wounds and the wisdom to know that this, now, is his vocation.

Kavaler has put aside his diplomatic career for part-time work at the State Department so that he can get home to greet his daughters after school and shepherd them through the rest of their day.

"I've told the girls many times that if we can get through this together, the rest of life will be a piece of cake," Kavaler said. "Life isn't a linear experience. It does get better and better and better but every day there are setbacks. There are peaks and valleys. We just hit a valley at a very bad time."

For those of us who have never seen such valleys, there is wisdom enough to share with our children for the difficult times ahead.