Here, in recent weeks, Gisele is newly divorced Topless in a Louis Vuitton ad, mostly decorated in polka dots handbag. Here was the newly divorced Gisele Go jogging in Costa Rica with a handsome “family jiujitsu instructor” Which insiders swear is completely platonic.
Sports ball player Tom Brady announced his retirement on Wednesday morning.
If you believe Internet comment theories, these two events are related. The couple’s split last year allegedly happened because Gisele wanted her then-husband to retire and Tom simply couldn’t give up the game.
No one knows the whole story except the couple. What we do know is that Tom eventually signed on for another season. A divorce attorney was hired, and ink was applied to the papers. Then Tom’s bonus season was in the doldrums, Giselle stood on the beach, and the quarterback probably realized exactly how much money he gave up in order to lose to the Dallas Cowboys.
The memes went viral after Tom’s retirement was announced. In the most evocative of all, the football star is portrayed as John Cusack in “Say Anything,” standing under Giselle’s window with a bum box, begging her to return it. Oh boy, I messed up this burial.
But he was trying to, perhaps, fix things? Notice how he wrote “I love my family” under his Instagram ad – Which, like Gisele’s photoshoot, looked like it took place on a Florida beach. Notice how he’s included a few photos of Gisele on his Instagram Stories, but they were subtle: photos of Gisele from behind, her arms dangling around their babies. If Brady was trying some kind of “say anything” move, it was of a more respectful nature.
On Wednesday afternoon, Gisele responded directly to Tom’s retirement announcement. “I wish you only wonderful things in this new chapter of your life,” she wrote.
Sending Gisele was a sweet send-off message, the kind of warm sentiment usually reserved for a graduation card signed by a distant aunt. She suggested that there would be no reunion, that The Book of Life could not be read or lived backwards, and that Tom would embark on this new chapter with Giselle’s support but not with her.
See, I’ve come two-thirds of the way through writing this column on Tom Brady’s retirement and divorce, and I can’t even tell you why I’m following these intimate celebrity gossip. I could hardly tell a quarterback from a quarter pounder; I’ve never stood on a beach in a sheer dress while a stylist was blowing a fan through my hair.
But this famous marriage between two rich and beautiful people seems to tell us something about relationships in general, or what it means to negotiate a full life with someone else. Whose profession takes a back seat? Who agrees to sacrifice, move to Tampa, to be the person on call when the kid vomits at school? Time is not infinite nor is geography. One parent can’t be walking the tarmac at Milan while the other plays quarterback at Green Bay. What is the cost of going after your dreams, or doing your best to make someone else’s dreams your own?
Few of us can imagine what it would feel like to be as good at anything as Tom Brady is at football – a gift that transcends the divine, as if God had given it to her. But I think most of us can imagine the kinds of things he might have been feeling when he posted on Instagram promising not to get emotional and then get emotional.
He might have been thinking about how he went on to work for 23 painful, impossible years, build a legacy, set an example, let it all out on the field, win like no one has ever won before, and also lose, because no one can win everything all the time. He might have been wondering who he would be now, without all that. And he might have been thinking about how he gave everything he had to a career, only to get to the end and wonder if it was all enough or too much.