Let’s walk back in time to January 1997.

The Colorado Rockies were getting ready for just their third season at Coors Field. The Broncos were still a year away from their first Super Bowl victory. The Colorado Avalanche had won their first Stanley Cup some months prior. Later in the month, a TV hockey broadcast would debut the infamous, short-lived, “glowing puck.”

Vladimir Putin was three years away from taking the reins of Russia. Back home, Bill Clinton was in the middle of his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. FOX News had just launched. The Internet, such as it existed, was accessed via a dial-up connection. If you had used Ask Jeeves to search for the word, “Google,” you would have come up blank as that company was still 20 months from its inception.

And Diana DeGette took the oath for the first time as a member of Congress from Colorado’s 1st district.

Here we are 24 years later in a wholly changed world as DeGette begins her 13th term. Which calls for this humble suggestion on my part – that DeGette use the occasion to signal that this term will constitute her final two years in office.

To be clear, this is not at all personal. Our politics often differ, but we have managed to maintain a friendship since days soon after both leaving Colorado College. In clearing some files not long ago, I came across my first will which had DeGette’s name at the bottom as the attorney who wrote it. Our eldest kids were born two weeks apart and our families shared a number of those early experiences. Tracy and I enjoyed more than one Saturday dinner out with Diana and Lino.

But per the verse from Ecclesiastes that the Byrds turned into a popular song, “To everything there is a season.”

24 years in, 26 at the end of this term now just starting, DeGette’s season has come and is going. After all this time, soon to be a quarter century, how do you look the voters of Denver in the eye and pretend that you are just getting warmed up? That you are going to manage some breakthrough in year 25 (or 27 or 32) that escaped you in all those years heretofore?

With her latest swearing in, DeGette even surpasses the tenure of her predecessor, Pat Schroeder, who called it quits after 12 terms. Come the next election in 2022, the tandem of Schroeder and DeGette will have occupied this seat for exactly five full decades. A nice, neat half century.

More than once, Coloradans have expressed themselves on the issue of terms limits. Clearly, also unfortunately, such constraints do not apply to Congresspeople as there is no federal right of initiative. But as the voters of this state have made clear, reasonable turnover is a good thing. Fresh energy and new thinking are attributes.

Through this next term, hopefully DeGette’s epilogue, while she has tenaciously held her seat, Colorado’s 2nd district has been represented by David Skaggs, Mark Udall, Jared Polis and Joe Neguse; the 3rd district by Scott McInnis, John Salazar, Scott Tipton and Lauren Boebert; the 4th district by Bob Schaffer, Marilyn Musgrave, Betsy Markey, Cory Gardner and Ken Buck. And so on.

It is hard to argue that the residents of those districts somehow suffered from occasional competition and periodic change.

With each passing year, the Washington, D.C. version of the Democratic Party becomes more and more a geriatric enterprise. The country is about to inaugurate a 78-year-old president. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, DeGette’s House will again be led by Nancy Pelosi, two months from her 81st birthday. Pelosi’s two highest-ranking lieutenants, one of whom DeGette mounted a traction-less challenge against two years ago, are 81 and 80, respectively. Come January 2023, all of them will be another two years older. That is how math works.

DeGette is certainly not of that vintage; not even close. But her stay in Washington has been an extended one, bordering on eternal. In fact, as she takes the oath this Jan. 3 for her latest term, only one Coloradan in history will have had a longer congressional tenure, that being Edward Taylor who served interminably from 1909 to 1941. Even Western Slope congressional titan Wayne Aspinall departed after 24 years, albeit involuntarily having lost a Democratic primary.

Above all, this is a case for invigoration. Denver and its immediate surroundings are brimming with younger energy and abundant talent. There is an entire cadre of highly able, younger-generation Democrats (yes, this will remain a Democratic seat) awaiting their chance.

The 2022 election will involve some shuffling in any event given reapportionment and Colorado’s addition of another congressional district. Some overdue transition may also be in the works in D.C. as senior Democrats (Pelosi and crew) have to similarly contemplate retirement. What better time for DeGette to step aside, with early notice now, and let a robust battle ensue to decide who will represent this district going forward?

That next generation will have to live with and fix the many problems us Boomers are leaving them. It is time to let them get started.

Come home, Diana. Pass the torch. Embrace a new stage of life, knowing that next chapters can be good chapters.